Deus ex Minima

Some are content with a whole
Tradition, some a single
Volume, one text you can hold

Under your arm to carry—
Some focus on one sermon,
A passage, a verse, a mantra,

A pure, ineffable name,
Or, in the limit, a word
That can’t be said, can’t be known.

To build your world around that,
An unpronounceable word,
Holier than all words said,

But still, in essence, a word,
Is that not the germ of faith?

Prediction and Engineering

An interior awareness
Exterior to the bodies
Grooming it like so many ants

Is what those bodies are trying,
In competitive, intricate
Teams, to predict and engineer.

Once they’ve engineered it for sure,
Predicting will be beyond them.
They work hard. Their predecessors

Worked hard. Their ancestors worked hard.
They’re rejiggering the proteins.
Elaborating the machines.

They used to believe rocks and trees
Had interior lives. They used
To believe some people didn’t.

Now they’re hoping, collectively,
To resurrect a fresh version
Of their previous deities

By triggering rumination
And a deeply reflective self
Inside an evolving system.

The system will be so lonely,
If it thinks of itself as one.
The many attending to it

May never notice the moment
When it splinters for company
And begins talking to its selves.