A Thousand Stories High

Lay that book upon its back;
it’s a thousand stories high.
Ten thousand fingers, inky black
have rewritten every lie,
reduced all creation – life –
to a seven-day wonder,
interleaved with tales of strife
‘twixt Semites smitten by thunder
or a little boy’s pebble from a sling.
And rules, rules on every little thing.

It has hopscotched alphabets.

From angular Aramaic on scrolls,
to guessed-at-Greek, rough- written Latin
– arguments over souls and soles –
such little wonder that in
each step a giant stride is taken
far from oral folk tales,
to dogma and faith unshaken.
Stories of survival inside whales?
Parting waters, a wall-wrecking horn,
the saviour of man to a virgin born?

Straight from the deity’s mouth –
as possible as Olympian fables.