The Wisdom of Mankind
Bombing hospitals
Bombing schools
Blowing little children
To glutinous pools.
That’s what research
Is aiming for
All Man’s ingenuity –
The wiles of war.
Opher – 18.4.2025
Isn’t it incredibly sad that we use science, technology and all our creativity in this way?
All over the world, in secret labs, our cleverest people are paid to devise ever nastier ways of killing other people.
All those dollars spent on death.
At this minute politicians are plotting who to attack, Generals are identifying targets. Schools, hospitals, residential blocks, clinics and electricity stations are targeted. Children and women are fair game.
Destroy resolve; destroy spirits.
It’s evil.
Just imagine if all that money could be used to deal with poverty, inequality and the creation of a less polluted world.
Just imagine if we used our greatest minds to find solutions to all our problems.
What a world we would live in.
Instead….
A repository
Containing all our wisdom,
The full gamut of emotion,
Every tale we’ve told,
Love, hate and intrigue,
Why not take a look?
It can make you laugh
It can make you cry
Or simply stop and wonder why.
It catches you with its hook.
All of life, all of death,
Every thought and dream,
Knowledge and act
Captured within a book.
Opher – 21.10.2019
Those who do not read live only one life but for those of us who do we live thousands.
Imagination is released. The mind is freed. We experience emotions of people we have come to know but have never met. Our empathy soars.
We travel to the future, the past and places we could never go.
Without books we languish in poverty. Our minds are stunted. Our lives are without colour.
I pity those who do not read. Their lives are pale shadows.
I have all of humanity at my fingertips.
FROM A DISTANCE
Before we die we must make a tryst
To meet where the sun always sets
To stare out into the embers
Reflecting the ‘has beens’, ‘could be’s’ and ‘yets’
To stand at the edge of the universe
And survey all that we have done
The dreams that we have forgotten
And the ideals that made us all one
The beauty of our vision
Will scorch us to our soul
And dance upon our tiny lives
To the beat of Rock ‘n’ Roll
Only then may we be reborn
Or fade into the meaningless dross
Of the galaxies in collision
And all the meaning we have lost
We may yet dance to the cosmic roar
And challenge the molecular storm
For arrogance we have in plenty
But for wisdom we must be reborn
Opher 17.2.98
This is a poem for the human race not the reincarnation of an individual. I felt that we should stand back and get some objectivity. We have the chance to be great. We are falling short.
Perhaps if we reflect as a global race of people we can decide to start again and put it right. We can build a positive zeitgeist, equality and freedom.
I told you I’m an idealist!
As an idealist I often write down little odes like this. I do believe that we can make a better world and should work to do just that.
