PROPITIATION*

Four laws of ecology:
 1) Everything is connected to everything else.
 2) Everything must go somewhere.
 3) Nature knows best.
 4) There is no such thing as a free lunch.

   --Barry Commoner
   The Closing Circle.

Eradicated molecules obey
the laws of nature's faith
and go somewhere,
affecting something else,
living their amnesiac lives
disguised as foods or poisons--
reincarnated polymorphously;
eternal matter.

Someone or something pays
for every advance or growth;
for every giant mankind step,
mankind is expended.
Germs hosted by man
are devoured by sewer worms
who lose, obeying rules
of icthyology.
Fish, in turn, on mankind's plate
are a truly unfree lunch.

There is no death;
there is no end to Hell.
Eradicated molecules obey
and go somewhere.
Someone pays for every death;
a price is recorded
for every redemption.
There is no inexpensive grace,
only a resurrection--
for which One has paid.

*Originally published in The Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, March 1977, Vol. 29, No. 1, page 45.