Empedocles simplified, and got it wrong:
‘War is the father of progress’ –
Then simpered in his golden sandals
To Etna’s hot volcanic rim
Wondering whether God was right
To give such force the name of war.
Lucifer smiled. Empedocles stood close,
Peered into the boiling din.
‘Your question has no answer,’ said Lucifer,
And pushed him in.
LUCIFER THE ARCHER
Robin Hood’s light-hearted men
In Sherwood Forest shot
At silver pennies marked
With a silver cross.
Lucifer, toxophilite,
Tipped the arrows true,
Drew back every archer’s yew
With fingers of Sherwood green.
Thus, fletched missiles overseen
Found numismatic tracks –
God’s son or not, the cross was shot
By Lucifer’s speeding sticks.
When two lines met
And, meeting, crossed,
And closed themselves in a ring
Lucifer felt a prison clang
Around his brow and through his eyes –
So made the outlaws’ arrows smash
Against all silver pennies
That bore a silver cross.
LUCIFER AND COLUMBUS
Lucifer became the sun:
Drew Christopher Columbus on
Into oceanic dusk.
Under the basin of the night
They followed stars
He patterned in their track.
By morning Lucifer arose
And deigned to push them over
The daily fortitudes of dawn.
The navigator’s cross-stays
Angled him
To guess the distance of the day.
When the fathom-line was flung
Its lead-head hit the sea and burst
In Lucifer’s fluorescent sparks.
He steadied the flickering needle
Through the Sargasso Sea,
Goaded a meteor to perform
A spectacular welcome,
And lured the Sons of Adam
Back to Paradise.
LUCIFER THE SURVEYOR
Lucifer the surveyor didn’t look
He measured, hands performing
A theodolite not prayer.
A dot behind the eyes held cosmography
In thrall, geometry intuition as he spanned
Paced and taped a kingdom in a day
Triangulated oceans in one night.
God took the credit
Every action in the world was His,
All seas and continents. He led
Footsteps on and filled all hearts
A wind banging the canvas sails
Of a ship whose crew was drunk
On loot, lewdness and the Lord.
Rejected Lucifer was bruised
Since science followed him not God.
He melted raw materials, lay rails, grew cities
Rolled lightning in a drum and made it work.
Adam’s sons ripped milk and honey from the earth
And God was praised.
But Lucifer saw his limp on every foot.
LUCIFER THE MECHANIC
Lucifer invented speed, taught
That one slow pulley drives a fast,
A sluggish stream revolves a mill
How fire melts and wind shifts
And iron floats and alloys fly.
Lucifer’s willing scholars learned
How one metal cuts another
And steel spread on a spindle
Is in its weakness flaked
By a stilled blade set against it.
A lubricated drill-tip
Tempered to diamond strength
Spins to steel clamped in a jig:
By playing speed to altered speed
Steel teeth in a circle
Mill into a shank of steel.
Lucifer in every lathe
Manufactured objects beyond
Man’s vulnerable version of himself;
He unmade God, and at his most demonic
Turned Man into an industrious mechanic.
LUCIFER AND REVOLUTION
When workers assembled at the station
Lucifer had waited since the swamp was drained.
Jutting chin and jaunty cap and posh Swiss overcoat,
Finger stabbing the air to rights,
He licked his Tartar lips and stroked
His beard, nodding sharply
At each injustice he would cure,
Clipped decisive words in steam-train language
Knit the crowd into carded fabric
Any pattern could be printed on.
He had waited long for such deep cheers
And smoky mosaic of faces,
Dimmed his eyes to just the right amount
Of inability to see the future,
When the mob would do such deeds
As burned all sensibility to ash:
‘Oh boy, we did that fucking castle in!
Splintered every lintel, broke every brick.
Those Old Masters burned a treat.
Forty years ago the duke raped my mother
So I plugged his duchess-daughter.
For the Revolution, of course –
We should have one every day!’
The shock-detachment of the Revolution came
Behind a glistening array of guns:
‘All right, chaps, fun’s over.
You work for us now, what?
So build that castle up again.
And who was that swine raped the duchess?
His trial starts tomorrow.’
‘The purity of Revolution shines
Bright for all to see,
A moral force that cleanses
Cleaner than the sea.’
‘You’ll be sorry you spoke,’
Comrade Lucifer retorted
When everything got out of hand.
‘You helped to make the Revolution,
Now you’ll be voted to the wall
Or destitution unimaginable.
I’m not Hamlet lost for a yes or no.
I’ll make an omelette any day
And break as many eggs as there are heads.
Chickens lay all the time!’
His grin was geological — under the moustache.
The assassin’s bullet didn’t kill
But scared him. He vanished.
Only One could play that game and win.