Silvertongue
He came down from the mountainside,
His beard was white, his hair was grey,
He brought his retinue of priests
All buckled in a warlike way.
They strode into the village square
And said: 'Now listen, everyone,
Just gather round, pay heed to him,
He's come to warn you - Silvertongue!'
His brow was cold, his face was grim
And we were silent in his stare,
We didn't make a single sound,
Stood hushed within the village square.
His priests were stood with weapons drawn,
Their swords and helmets bore a spire,
And on their breasts, the holy sign.
The symbol of St. Elmo's Fire.
'I am the Word you must obey,'
He said, in tones that chilled the soul,
'I come with tales of history,
Of those who chose the Devil's mould.
They brought the wrath of God to bear
On humankind, he gave his seal,
The one commandment you must share;
Man never must invent the wheel!'
At that, the clouds of purple gold
With lightning lit the mountainside,
As if the Lord above had heard,
Approved the Word, and then had smiled.
The rain that glowed began to fall
And lit the corn out in the field,
It glowed there in the darkening light,
It sparked blue flashes in his beard.
'In days of old,' he said, 'they made
A pact with him who mocked the rod,
He showed them how to make the wheel,
They used it then, in spite of God,
Their lives revolved on wheels in wheels
That ground their flour, that rolled down hills,
That made their own fake lightning power,
That drove their water driven mills.'
'As they grew mighty, God despaired,
They built great towers in the sky,
Machines that flew them in the air
The Devil's transport, by and by,
And then the tribes had gone to war
Their wheels bogged down in fields of mud,
They used the wheel to drive their trains
Of slaughter through vast fields of blood.'
'The end came suddenly, they say,
When men designed a thousand suns,
They lit the earth as bright as day,
Each sun roared like a million guns.
The seas reared up and swamped the shore,
The cities burned, the people died,
Their wheels lay rotting to the core
With what was left of human pride!'
'So you must be just as the Ox
And bear your burden on your back,
No wheel shall light your daily task,
What you can't lift, then you must lack.
The man who first designs a wheel
Shall surely seek his own reward,
To hang upon the willow tree,
His wife and child put to the sword!'
He left us then, with all his priests,
I heard they wandered near and far,
They fought with all the mutant beasts
Out on the fringe, where land was scarred.
But neighbors whispered each to each
The words that they had heard that day:
'What is this wheel he spoke about?
Could life be made less harsh that way?'
For months we sweated with the ox
That dragged the plough that we would guide,
Our furrows slowly curved their way
Like ripples through the countryside.
My neighbor baulked at all the strain
Of ploughing slow, and bleeding hands,
'God rot the man!' I heard him say,
'I shall not do what he commands!'
He took his sons and went to ride
Out where the land was burned and black,
They took their arrows, and their pride
And sought the priest, no turning back!
The clouds rolled in all purple gold
Down from the heights, I stayed inside,
The rain that burned the flesh came down,
I heard that Silvertongue had died.
My neighbor came back home once more
I saw him proudly plough his fields
His plough rolled free, not like before,
It raced past mine, through clods and weeds.
I looked more closely as it passed,
And saw some strange thing that he'd done,
The plough rolled freely underneath,
Upon the skull of Silvertongue!
David Lewis Paget
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