Babel: A poem 

When civilisation began to speak 

the first ideas were communicated 

And the dust of ignorance settled 

into beds of understanding 

God’s children began constructing 

the first towers of language 

So each step took them higher 

on the roads to union. And the sky 

that shone with its numerous suns 

became a universal map to be traced. 

But the temple of learning 

beckoned a curse so livid 

that it spawned a deluge of words 

to sting the land with diversity. 

Then God’s face billowed among the clouds 

His fortress safe out of dissent 

that knowledge in different hands 

would tarry unshared to strange lands