Credo by Simon MacCulloch

I cannot be sure; one iota of doubt
Will cancel a lifetime of certainty out
And even if, after I wake from death’s dream
I stand at God’s throne and he tells me his scheme
Perhaps I’m still sleeping and heaven or hell
Are drug-induced fantasies - how can I tell?
And if that is true of what’s outside my skin
How much the more so of whatever’s within!
And what of a sentience alone in the dark
Which thinks “I am God… Or perhaps I’m a quark”?
Makes Adam from dust with a rib for a wife
To people a world with a virus called life
Whose purpose is simple and strongly persists:
Convincing that quark that it really exists.
Alas, I am made in its image and thus
For all of philosophy’s desperate fuss
Can only repeat that I wish it were so
Amen and amen - but I’ll never quite know.

About the Poet:

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and is a regular contributor to Reach Poetry and others.