The bigotry of educated men,
Their stark refusal always to face facts,
Denying everything beyond their ken,
Including testified and proven acts.
The ill-will and contempt they show to those
Who seek the wisdom of a bygone age,
Their scornful reassurance: “Science knows.”
And Science alone can free us from our cage.
A ghost is someone’s wild imagination,
Astrology a fraud, an old wives’ tale.
They state without the slightest hesitation
That nothing lies beyond the twilight vale.
The saucers never came, all photographs
Are fakes; all witnesses are hapless dupes.
Yet those who mock do so with hollow laughs.
Conscious that they instead are nincompoops?
And when the laughter, like the well, runs dry,
The epithets and curses cease to work,
Then comes the silent treatment: pass them by,
Don’t navigate where fearful krakens lurk.
Men of Science! but for all their erudition,
Taboos and shibboleths usurp their minds.
They scorn religion for its superstition,
Yet fail to see that light, like darkness, blinds.
Away you wretched prisoners of reason!
Take your material theory, spread it round,
But times are changing, come the stormy season,
The gales will raise your temples to the ground.
[Taboos and shibboleths, yes, I stand by that, but please refer also to This Age Of Reason. The above was first published in the 1987 anthology We’re Coming For Your Telecom Shares.]
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