Tell Me

You are the Chosen, you have Dominion

Over bird and beast and the fowl of the air

You have Dominion over your brother.

You are the Chosen. You have divine sanction

You have Manifest Destiny; and you have fulfilled it.

Oh, how you have fulfilled it.

You can’t create, but you can destroy, you can kill

The leaf trembling with dew, you can poison

The mountain stream glittering in the sunshine

You can destroy the ancient cities sleeping in the evening sun.

You can burn forests down to ash, you can break the mountains down

You can devastate them all. You have Dominion.

With your guns and your bombs, your drones flying overhead

Your machines that rip the heart out of the earth

Your factories that belch poison in the name of profit

You can kill, you can destroy, you can rule what’s left

And talk about Freedom and Democracy

For you are Chosen, you have Dominion.

Which is to say, you rule over the crust

Of a ball of rock, and the shell of air around it.

Nothing more.

You do not rule over the moon, the planets, the sun,

The myriad of galaxies, the expanding Universe.

You have no control over Time and Space

And in the scheme of things, you are nothing.

You are less than nothing,

An eyeblink, and you’re gone, you’re

Less than a meteor flashing in the night.

Tell me:

What of your frontiers, your Eternal Borders

Which you say will last forever and a day

What will happen to them as continents move

When the oceans rise and mountains fall?

Tell me:

In five billion years hence

When the sun is a red giant, swollen red ball of helium fire

Earth burned to a cinder, the oceans dry, the air all gone

Where will you be? Can you turn the tide of entropy?

Tell me:

When the wheel of Time turns, and with it all of eternity

Where will be your Dominion then, your Freedom and Democracy

Where will be your Holy Profit, your One True God,

What will you do with your Eternal Wars?

Tell me

What will be left of you

After Dominion.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2012