Like us, Will lived in fundamentalist times:
Belief was tainted with literalistic science
And thought police committed evil crimes
Against those citizens that scorned compliance.
By giving the world allegorical plays
He paid great tribute to the golden mean:
For only metaphor the truth conveys,
Which lies not at the poles but in between.
If revived, Bin Laden with his pen he’d blot,
Big Brother Bush he would spear, shake, and wilt;
For sure the new crusading hawks could not
Hide from the poet’s eagle eye their guilt.
Yet all would be in vain – since the split mind,
Though viewing the tempest, stays by nature blind.
Jerusalem
11 November 2004