I: Mephisto and God

Mephisto

All of these mysteries that you claim to keep,

the learned below spurn to regard so little;

Whose outline yet drapes the wide world entire

enforcing a silence before their tongues inquire.

The faithful doth put their heads to sleep,

rest assured in dreams of their souls’ acquittal.

Trembling and awed, even the learned agree:

Life has a price, because it’s not given for free.

In moments of agony and madness unique,

Even the heart of the heathen cries out your sickle.

For every human heart has a lack that you built,

One that you filled with bottomless guilt.

I, Mephisto, am not cowed by your mystique.

Your promises ring hollow, your words always brittle.

I am your equal and I know the truth

Though it requires not even a sleuth.

I’d wager all there is a greater leap,

a question that for all you are is still a riddle;

That when You created Man, You rolled the dice,

Cut from His rib and then rolled it twice.

God

The question you pose is one of chance.

Whether I, being God, act in ways uncertain?

What saith you when my answer breaks tooth?

Would you believe it then or need further proof?

Mephisto

So my argument you doth admit and advance!

Let us climax this play now towards its curtain:

Tell me true here now there is no plan

All is chaos for a width without span.

God

You march on ahead without my question sated.

I ask you again: what proof you require?

The price of this knowledge is paid full in faith,

not a theorem of words strung to show so you saith.

Mephisto

In circles, you talk! Oh, how I hate it!

Instead of answers, you endlessly suspire!

If you seek to confound, so that I might falter and cease

Then you’ve misplaced another bet on my unfounded caprice!

God

Free will was a gift not lightly bestowed.

The answers you seek would ruin the surprise.

A light that illumines always a shadow destroys

So what was in the darkness, in light avoids.

• 2022