Here Come The Old Gods

Here come the old gods,
   laughing in their sleeves
At all the foolishness
   humankind believes.
Vishnu and Odin say
   Prayers are in vain.
Loki and Shiva say
   All goes down the drain.
Jesus and Buddha say
   All will rise again.
Dig into the molecule,
   the atom you disclose--
Search into the atom and
   its particles expose--
Then to string and quantum,
   to things that no one knows,
But downward still and downward
   the endless staircase goes.
What yet smaller pieces
   make up the smallest part?
What is outside everything?
   What’s before the start?
The answer’s in the searching
   through human gods and sin,
The answer’s in the clicking
   of the wheel’s endless spin,
The answer’s in the angels
   dancing on a pin,
The answer is the journey
   you begin, begin, begin.

Robin Helweg-Larsen


If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Robin Helweg-Larsen would be pleased to hear them.