Christopher Shepheard - The Tower of Babel

An enterprise for zealots to pursue <br />Who felt within their skills a worship quickening <br />To build a spire of stone and thereby light <br />The heavens up, for all men to acquire. <br /> <br />I would have thought the ladder Jacob’s faith <br />Inclined against the knees of God sufficed. <br />What need was there to shimmer up and blend <br />Communion in craft with sand and lime? <br /> <br />But Janus smiles: no craftsman can endure <br />The young, the quick, the supple hand of learning <br />To whittle at the cipher of his art. <br />Each one must cap his parapet by dint <br />Of cuneiform, for in the mason’s mind <br />All chisels but his own are butcher blades. <br /> <br />(1988)<br /><br />Christopher Shepheard<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-tower-of-babel-2/