Poetry won’t save you: A Poem about God

‘God does not exist’
My husband said
My father said
The people said
‘God does not exist, neither the tooth fairy, nor Santa Claus’
‘God does not exist?’ I countered, ‘tell me then
Please tell me, if you can
What does exist?’

‘Reason’ they answered, ‘and
Empirically proven facts:
‘We can prove the earth is round; the universe, expanding
A vast explosion out of nothing led to everything we know
Now go ahead and prove that God exists.’
‘I can’t, and I don’t need to prove
What simply is,’ was my reply
‘Is what?’
‘Is in the poetry – that’s why it works’

‘Poetry won’t save you’
My father said
‘Poetry is worthless’
The politicians said, though what they really meant was
‘Ideas are dang’rous, when they fall into wrong hands’
‘Poetry won’t save you’
My father said again:
‘It didn’t save Wilfred Owen; he died one week before the Armistice was signed, he wrote
‘O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/To break earth’s sleep at all?’

Good point, came my reply, ‘but here’s another:
‘Can Science answer Owen’s question? Can Reason?’
Consider the universe, at its smallest scale, we find:
Quantum entanglement, non-locality and foam
No concrete facts for us to grasp at there
And at the largest scale, we find:
Dark energy, dark matter, and dark flow
For all our knowledge we still see as though through a glass, darkly.

The conclusion of a billion rational minds is then
That ‘Poetry won’t save you, God does not exist,’ and furthermore
That ”Poetry did not save Wilfred Owen’
But I counter:
‘Yes it did:
Poetry saved Owen perhaps 1000 times over
Was with him in the trenches
When the bullets split the sky
And shrapnel rained down on him from hellish firmament

And it has saved me too
And saves me still, whenever I repeat my silent prayer
I am, I live, though only for a short time
Nor is God in the words, nor in the rationale, nor in the Spark Notes
God is in the music
And we cannot choose, but hear.’

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