The Asker Poem by Daniel Artemas Harmon

I asked the bobbin in his den
and warrior chiefs in shiny boots,
the doddering old, the greenling shoots,
practitioners of Marx and Zen,
fat reverends with pious eyes
and maids with reverential thighs:

'Where is? When was? What then? Who are?
From what? How near? With which? Where to?
How can? Who did? Up what? How far?
Full? Empty? Now? Am I? Are you?
But no one knew, not beast nor man,
could tell me when or what began.

'It's secret! God the Great, ' I cried
(Security celestial!)
considers man too bestial
and keeps these matters classified.'
And now I wonder, in my way,
If God, too, has a CIA.