To A Secular Cynic

You think you are modern. You think you are tolerant, humane, enlightened Beyond the benighted reign Of other-worldly groping After false hope and certainty. You think you are practical, pragmatic, cool, Scientific, true heir of Enlightenment, breathing Only rational air. But your modernity is old, foretold, foregone In Aquinas and John Donne, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazzali and many more; your Tolerance ends sharply at the blade of difference, a Name for fear of all but conformity. You think you think for your Self but you have no Idea where your ideas were made; your Pragmatism a code (read Dante) for expedience, Convenience, and absence of all value. You believe Nothing, and your morals - if any - come From the dark night from which you think you have Emerged. The sun in whose dazzling you drown yourself Is the bland light of indifference, of ignorance. Your humanity, your science rest on Blind, abstract, dog-eared Devotion.