the minute intricacies of life,
and with each precise tick
of his winding bell,
knows that God exists:
the invention of this world,
far too complex a mechanism
to bear an empty face,
limbless hands.
He knows
that each clock has its maker.
All the while,
this clockmaker's face, his hands,
keep whirring about,
turning time into a science:
his complexities,
far more than the simple clock's.
3 comments:
This poem takes on much different tone from your other religious poems. Your other poems usually question the existence of God, but this poem leaves no doubt that God exists. This shows that Yoo have quite a range (I couldn't resist for old times sake). Good choice with the metaphor of the clock. I like the "empty face" and "limbless hands" lines best. Nice pun in the second line by the way.
I really like the ideas here, and wow I never thought I would read something from Edward acknowledging the existence of God. Interesting. I also like the notion, at least my interpretation of it, that we rationalize the things that we don't understand. Turning a concept like time into a finite item like a clock. You capture that nicely here.
I changed the title of this poem from "The Clockmaker's Maker" to "The Clockmaker's Maker's Maker." I'll have to rework the presentation of some of the ideas in the poem sometime, as my intention was not to confirm the existence of a god, but to point at the paradox of the Clockmaker argument, which suggests that this world is far too complex to not have a maker. However, the paradox lies in the fact that, if this world is too complex, than the maker, by nature of the creator/created relationship (excluding Darwinian evolution), would have to be more complex, and if the maker is more complex, than the maker would have to have been made as well, and so on and so forth into infinitum. I know: it's not all here, but I appreciate the comments!
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