Words Of A Dying God Poem by David Welch

Ever since I was a kid in college
something troubling has been on my mind,
put evolution near morality
and many contradictions you will find.

Our instincts versus our sentience,
blood programming pit against free choice,
and now matter how I looked at it all,
there were hard truths that I could not avoid.

That so many things we think are moral
give us no evolutionary edge,
that the only place some virtues work
is in the world that's inside our head.

The nice guy always does seem to finish last,
functional bullies get all of the girls;
men are not loved unconditionally,
only for what we bring to the world.

We like to think we can talk it all out,
but sometimes people do need a smack;
we study hard to make things better,
then just get farther and farther off-track.

We give to help those people in need,
then it just ends in dependency,
so many thinks that we think must be right
just seem to deepen the tragedy.

The things that we think, the things that we feel,
seem to drag us all until we're insane,
what we want to build, and what the world allows,
are not exactly one and the same.

When I realized this, and other such things,
I spent many years just trying to think
of why evolution would produce a beast
whose brain would contradict its own instincts?

Why can we think of things that can never be?
what good are goals we can never achieve?
It seems like we've been set up for failure,
there had to be some reason, I believed.

For those reasons I chose biology,
got a professorship and did research,
probed deeply into the depths of the mind,
won countless accolades for my work.

Ran across endless theories of why
we contradict ourselves at such cost,
but every bit solved brought ten new questions,
all that toil, and I was still at a loss.

But the need to know remained every strong,
and though it nearly cost me my career,
I started probing the faiths of the world
to see what older wisdom might appear.

Though they have their flaws that one must wade through,
and their practitioner so very human,
they also retain time-tested ideas,
that have proved their use again and again.

I focused on the archaeologists,
combing over lost texts and old sites,
and at first it seemed I was stymied again,
until I got a phone call late one night…

It was from an old colleague of mine,
in southern Russian working a new dig,
of Proto Indo-European tribes,
he believed it would be something big.

Wanted me to come out and take a look
at the artifacts they had found there,
claimed they had found religious writings,
the pictures he sent of it made me swear.

Writing should not exist that far back in time,
but the etched stones that they found proved it did!
A text speaking of a long-lost religion…
was so excited I bounced like a kid.

A week later I was flying out there,
my assistant Tommy Bains at my side,
we flew to Moscow then rented a car
for a very long and exhausting drive.

The site was out in empty countryside,
there were more cattle and sheep them men,
we expected to see bustling workers,
but we approached and saw no sign of them.

It looked as if they'd just abandoned it,
all of their gear and machines left behind,
there was no note, and we could see no cause,
I felt nervous, unsure what I would find.

After looking around for thirty minutes,
I came across a large plastic case,
it had the word ‘Artifact' printed on it,
like so many others left in this place.

I did not know why, but I felt I had to
open the box to see what it held,
what I saw in there haunts me to this day,
you're the first people that I've dared to tell.

It was a stone tablet covered in a script
that I'd never seen, all alien and strange,
and then, before my astonished eyes,
the letters all seemed to just rearrange? !

It now was many rows of English text,
what I saw broke all natural laws,
the first line I read, sit imply said:
‘All who read this, these are words from your god…'

My mind did reel, as anyone's would,
but I felt no disbelief, and no doubt,
as if some power confirmed it was true,
and there was no time for messing about.

My eyes just could not be pulled away,
I could hear a deep voice within, and it said:
‘I left these words so you'd know why you're here,
and what awaits us all going ahead.

‘You see evolution is the only tool
that can do this in the time left to me,
I'm dying and have but a billion years
to give rise to the next deity.

‘This may seem utterly strange to your mind,
the mere thought that an almighty can die,
but I'm not the first god that there has been,
I was much like you, way back in time.

‘I belonged to a species like your own,
born of a mother of flesh and blood,
our people were guided by our own god,
who had lifted us up out of the mud.

‘We were an impossible old species,
with each generation we would improve,
but our god knew he had a limited time,
so helped make our growth gentle and smooth.

‘After billions of years of such guidance,
we had become much like gods ourselves,
with powers you cannot imagine yet,
but who would rise up? None could tell.

‘I set myself to serious study,
just like everyone else of my kind,
then one day I felt a great clarity,
as if a veil was lifted from my mind.

‘I had transcended into godhood,
in a great surge of pure energy,
my essence transformed to ethereal,
and I drew all bits of matter to me.

‘See, when a being becomes a deity,
he consumes everything that came before,
all life, all matter, even my old god,
until the universe of old was no more.

‘A universe is a god's very flesh,
I drew it all in, and then with a bang,
expanded outwards as this new universe,
all the cosmos with my essence sang.

‘This happened fourteen billions years ago,
all of creation relies on my will,
and I marveled at this magnificence,
flexing my powers did keep my time filled.

‘I even thought that I was immortal,
that forever I would have time to play,
but like the old god, I've recently found
that even a deity can age.

‘All powerful does not mean all knowing,
and a successor I did not create,
I ignored the lessons of the old god
until now, when it is almost too late…

‘I do not have time to take you by the hand,
use the method that was applied to us,
it would take too long, and I have to hurry,
a billion years just isn't long enough.

‘I made evolution just for this task,
to speed things up and make godhood arise,
intense competition will weed out the weak,
strength and competence will be realized.

‘It may seem brutal to those who will perish,
but no other solution can now work,
it may seem evil…maybe it is,
but rest assured, it is I that's the jerk.

‘I was the one who arrogantly assumed
that I didn't have to learn from the past,
it was my mistake that necessitates this,
I will regret this screw-up to the last.

‘But for existence to continue on
a deity must always exist,
and each will consume all that went before,
then remake it, so that all will persist.

‘That is why you die, and why you struggle,
and though the process seems ugly and cruel,
one of you will evolve through all this hell
into a new deity fit to rule.'

After those words the voice stopped speaking,
in a stunned state my mind searched and grasped,
then by my side I heard a deep breath,
my colleague Tommy Bain's shattered rasp.

From his face I could tell that he'd seen it too,
and from the terror set deep in his eyes,
I knew that he couldn't comprehend it,
he shrieked madly, and away he did fly.

I never was to see poor Tommy again,
they found his body beneath a large cliff,
the dig crew they never found a trace of,
but I knew that they too had ended it.

Can't say that I haven't had the idea,
knowing what I know…it just isn't right,
but it also tells me there's no escape,
his words made clear there is no afterlife.

No true depths to our art and our beauty,
just side-effects our middling stage,
no greater purpose, no spiritual realm,
and no great wisdom transcendent and sage…

Our whole existence is just a rush-job
from a god who can't organize his time,
we suffer due to his incompetence—
It would be simpler if he was malign.

And me the only one who knows this fact,
the only one who learned it and went on…
Should I have kids to pass this strength to them?
Is that my part in this farcical song?

Or should I just wash my hands of this mess,
should I no longer even pretend.
If our existence is this meaningless,
is it better that the universe end?

Or would another just rise in my place?
That would seem to me the most like call,
since this god says he started evolution,
it's unlikely that would just let it stall.

At least I won't have to see how it ends,
so there's nothing more that I have to do,
except find a job, I quit researching,
no longer bother to search for the truth.

I regret what I was in my youth.