We are the centuries.
We are the chin-choppers and the golly whoppers,
and soon we shall discuss the amputation of your head.
We are your singing garbage men, Sir and Madam,
And we march in cadence behind you,
chanting rhymes that some think odd.
Wir, as they say in the old country,
marschieren weiter wenn alles in Scherben fallt.
We have your Eoliths, and your Mesoliths and your Neoliths.
We have your Babylons and your Pompeiis, your Caesars and your
chromium-plated (vital ingredient-impregnated) artifacts.
We have your bloody hatchets and your Hiroshimas.
We march in spite of Hell, we do-—
Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus Vulgaris,
telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve
and a slick traveling salesman called Lucifer.
We bury your dead, and their reputations.
We bury you.
We are the centuries.
Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little of godhood, feel pain, give birth,struggle a little while, succumb:
(Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.)
Generation, regeneration, again, again, as in a ritual, with blood-stained vestments and nail-torn hands, children of Merlin, chasing a gleam.
Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens—and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same.
(AGH! AGH! AGH!—an idiot screams his mindless anguish amid the rubble. But quickly! let it be inundated by the choir, chanting Alleluias at ninety decibels.)
Hear then, the last Canticle of the Brethren of the Order of Leibowitz, as sung by the century that swallowed its name.
LUCIFER IS FALLEN.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 