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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NEW APOCRYPHA: THE GREAT MERGER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS

Poet Analysis

First Line: PHILO, THE WORST HAS COME
Last Line: OF GODS, WHO ALWAYS DIE.
(Exodus, Chapter XX.)

Philo, the worst has come,
All we foresaw and feared:
Delphos will soon be dumb,
Eleusis felled and cleared.

Not only Marduk and Bel
Shamash, Nana, and Sin
Are doomed to be swallowed. Rebel?
It is too late to begin.

They have worked for this merger for years;
They have bullied, lied and coerced.
They have played with curses and tears.
And now at last is the worst:

For Zeus goes into the bowl
Of Cyclops, thoroughly blended.
The brew is Jehovah, a Soul
Envious, sour, commended

And forced to our lips. His son
And another, the Holy Ghost,
Are mixed with him, there is none
Not stirred in the mixture and lost

Of the gods we loved. They say
There is only one god, not many.
Well, who knows, we of clay,
If there be a thousand, or any?

They say there is one -- all right!
They take over all the rest.
And so there is one, we can fight,
Argue, pray and protest;

Set up a booth to Apollo,
Athene; bawl and persuade.
The crowds no longer follow --
Jehovah has got the trade.

For the Jews have used the scheme
Of commerce for making a god:
A harbor where no trireme
But their own can dock or load.

Now who will come to dissolve
This theo-monopoly?
And the power they took devolve
On a mightier deity?

It will come. But as for Zeus,
Osiris, Ptah, Zoroaster,
They are stewed in the dominant juice
Of Jehovah, lord and master.

We accept the fate. We laugh.
The earth, the sea and the sky
Are at last the cenotaph
Of gods, who always die.



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