Story #55 - The Codex of Dead Things

A poem for your Sunday edification!

The Codex of Dead Things

“The book, the book, the book!” They cried

As they danced around the fireside

Invoking its pages as spell craft to ward off the dark

Then returned to their lowly huts

Ate salted jerky and some nuts

And dreamed of a future where life wasn’t so grim and stark

The book spoke of the distant past

Of halcyon days before the blast

When cities sprawled to the horizon and blotted the sky

The people could barely recall

So many years after the fall

All the majestic magic of man’s golden age gone by

But their book held the secret plans

The method by which human hands

Could build again the glorious machines their fathers wrought

They held faith that in times to come

Industry once again would thrum

The book having preserved the knowledge while the war was fought

*

“The book, the book, the book!” They said

The village elders, those who led

Long studied its arcane secrets with searching eyes that pried

The diagrams and measurements

All of the book’s arcane contents

Were meant to resurrect a world that otherwise had died

The elders had promised when asked

Before too long a time had passed

To make the book’s inventions real objects once again

The toilets no one had to dig

A coal mine and an oil rig

Ten thousand baubles to enhance pleasure and dampen pain

They sat in earnest and discussed

How best to raise up from the dust

The glory that before had been around them everywhere

Resources were allotted out

Though in each heart there was some doubt

That all this effort would amount to much more than a prayer

*

“The book, the book, the book,” they spat

The inner ruling council sat

And rued the day they’d promised that they could return to life

The treasures of a fallen past

Across a gap of time so vast

That now a prized possession would most likely be a knife.

The rulers talk turned venomous

Of selfishness they did discuss

And all agreed the people’s demands were too much to bear

“They should be glad for what they’ve got!

“Instead they expect us to plot

“A whole world’s worth of comfort magicked up out of the air!”

But they could not say this aloud

Within the hearing of the crowd

Else they’d have been strung up and stripped of titles they enjoyed

They thus resumed their great project

To remake what the world had wrecked

A feat in which their villagers would wholly be employed

*

“The book, the book, the book,” he mourned

The holy man sat unadorned

Deep in a cave outside the village he had once called home

He’d read the book in younger days

Each page had set his mind ablaze

He’d sworn to build each contraption described within the tome

But knowing now what it would take

To pull off made his temples ache

He knew the labor hopeless long before it was begun

For when humans at first had made

Civilization and arrayed

The thousand miracles from which the modern age was spun

Oil was spurting from the ground!

Coal was just laying all around!

The stuff of industry was handy when the world was young!

But people now had no such luck

What was left of these things was stuck

In deep holes, under oceans, or in places too far-flung

*

The book, the book, the book, the knowledge of a world passed on

Is useless without access to the treasures of the earth

The most detailed blueprints that have ever yet been drawn

Do not, absent easy energy, have obvious worth

The story of the modern world was not preordained

We could have tripped up any time against some hopeless lack

Of resources that would have left our ambition restrained

And to the days of hunting and gathering sent us back

Knowledge alone is not the final arbiter of fate

For Nature’s gifts as well command a leading part to play

Should we squander our current circumstances then the gate

Of science will be closed to us, our efforts turned away

We came from monkeys, and to monkeys hence we shall return

Unless we take the chance we have to become something more

To do miracles without disasters—this we must learn

To sail the sea of invention without running ashore

For if we run aground there will be no pushing back out

The oars will all be snapped with no trees there for us to fell

We know how to make buckets but we cannot drink a drought

Our first try must be heaven or we’ll surely end in hell.

END

Thanks for reading! As always, if you enjoyed this story, please like, comment, or share this post with others. Have a great week, and I’ll be back next Sunday with something fun.