RK Rugg
The Beasts Are Gods
Erasure Poem
Baruch 6, the Epistle of Jeremiah
You shall see in Babylon
their gods.
They
holdeth a sceptre as a man
and
a sword,
but
they
are
cats.
Therefore fear them,
roar and cry before
them,
worship them,
And when any one of them
sheweth his power
do that which is commanded,
knowing
that
the
Beasts
are
gods.
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Author’s Notes: This is my first attempt at an erasure poem, although this type of poetry has always fascinated me. I think the idea that there may be a hidden message or a deeper truth to be found in a text opens up so many possibilities. In this case, the source text is a letter or sermon purported to have been delivered by Jeremiah (or in his style) to the Hebrews exiled to Babylon. It is an exhortation to resist idolatry, to avoid the worship of false gods created by the priests of Babylon. But if the Letter of Jeremiah warns the Hebrews against idols that have been crafted by human hand, isn’t it possible that the other side of the coin is that the gods of nature (animals, perhaps?) are to be feared and obeyed?
RK Rugg spent his youth breaking horses and guiding pack trips into the backcountry of Idaho and Montana. Following a journalism career in the Reno-Tahoe area of Nevada, he now resides in New England. Working in speculative fiction, speculative non-fiction and speculative poetry, his recent projects of note include developing an anthology of science fiction and fantasy inspired by life on America’s Indian Reservations. His speculative poetry has recently appeared in Utopia Science Fiction Magazine and Snakeskin Poetry Webzine.
Editor’s Notes: Illustration generated by Adobe Firefly Image 4 with the prompt: “In the style of a Babylonian bas relief, a bipedal cat holding a scepter in one paw and a sword in the other.”