Gods Pulse

Consolidation and monopoly
And pantheon reduction alternate

With wild, weedy outbreaks of fresh prophets
Touting fresh final visions of new faiths.

On the whole, the monopolists have won
More often than not, their big-box Gods served

Well by legions of lawyers and soldiers.
The independent deities grow rare

And then rarer, as they tend to appeal
Only to those acolytes who prefer

The specialness of rarity, elites
Of hermetic wisdom, secret handshakes.

Monopoly always risks implosion,
However. Vertical integration

Combined with singular omnipotence
Can only lead to one of two results—

Either the pantheon pruning goes on
Until it eliminates the last one,

Or all sorts of small enterprises start
Springing up from the giant’s broken corpse.

Come back to Earth in a thousand orbits.
Assuming that humans still run about

In cooperation competitions,
Expect no divinities (unlikely)

Or hosts of new pretenders to the throne.
We’ll be here. Maybe not us exactly,

But some of our wordy descendants,
Some of them praising fresh orthodoxies.