Monday, May 16, 2011

Acts 7:55-60 (vs. 55 quote NRSV)

Stephen's Regard

But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven
and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

By the reckoning of some,
Stephen, trapped by enemies wielding stones
about to crush his life away
is soon to be a mere zero,
as another Stephen - Hawking - tells the Guardian:

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.
There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; 
that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

How odd if, through some mediating progenitor,
the one brain and all parts appertaining
were named after the other.
Fear be what it may,
the witness stood against the dark
as the circle closed 'round him.

The I that regards is the itch we cannot scratch -
it worries out metaphors we suck up to
like gods
as if all else were diseased.

© 2011 Andy Gay