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Poem: “The Ants”

 

The Ants

The ants have built their mansion in a pile of sand,
Are we not better, wiser, larger,
The cities of our comforts better planned?

Clever, they misconceive the great backhoe
The concrete mixer and the dredge,
For at their scale how is an ant to know?

The mall was in the blueprint long before
The ants began to dig a nest
Beneath the threshold of the automatic door

Do you see the parable and simile in this,
The larger scale invisible to them,
The over-riding enterprise they miss?

Like them, like them we reckon out of scale
Come other-world construction
When we least expect our enterprise to fail

Construction, not destruction, that collision
Of two competing plans
Beyond their comprehension or their vision

Pavel
May 15, 2011


Pavel Chichikov is a Washington DC-based poet and photographer. He has written for both the secular and the Catholic press on issues as diverse as Russian nuclear weapons systems, Olympic athletes, and miracles. His books include From Here to Babylon: Poems by Pavel Chichikov,  Lion Sun: Poems by Pavel Chichikov, Mysteries and Stations in the Manner of Ignatius, and Animal Kingdom. Pavel may be heard reading his works on catholicradiointernational.com and on pavelreads.com. His poetry regularly appears on "The Poetry of Pavel Chichikov."