Listen to Marvin read Sooner or Later
When I was young,
I wondered:
“What’s the point? We’re gonna die.”
School, marriage, kids, sweat,
Tumult, worry, pain—
Deranged responsibility—
For what?
At Jericho,
Yahweh ordered Joshua:
Cleanse!
Kill every citizen,
Every animal.
For what?
Sooner or later
They’d all die anyway.
Torquemada—
Heretics’ bane—
Tortured, burned,
Purifying Spain,
Until he, inevitably,
Gave up his own
Blood-drenched ghost.
How many Huguenots
Succumbed to Catholic rage?
And vice versa?
If Shias and Sunnis,
Hindus and Buddhists
Would pause
(Distressed faith, after all,
A leaking ship
On uncertain seas)—
Substitute debate
For massacre—
Their longer lives,
Sooner or later,
Would all end anyway.
Add in the Battle of Marathon,
The charge of the Light Brigade,
Gettysburg,
The Somme,
Stalingrad,
And, of course,
Hiroshima, Nagasaki—
We’re talking millions here—
For what?
God? Country? Family?
Perhaps just spoils!
Honor? Heroic self-esteem?
Please!
Why all the fuss?
We all die anyway,
Sooner or later.
(6/14/09)