They were matter-of-fact and mercantile,

their deities stockpiled in lumber rooms,

containers, or the air-conditioned acres

of a state-of-the-art clockwork hangar.

Too good to clear away, they laid them up,

just in case, alongside incense and charms,

the stacks of cheap libationary bowls.

It didn’t take that much – distant thunder,

a tremor, or the rumours of a quarrel

brewing somewhere – for the market to spike

again. They could ship them out and lug them

quietly to all of the listed shrines.

 

An accurate grasp of divination

based on observable facts seemed the way

to go. Pinning their faith on punditry,

they put seismologists on the payroll;

and twigged they’d make it ahead of the curve

when an ideas man whose needle was stuck

in a crackpot theory of everything

changed his tune and predicted eclipses.

 

Keeping one step in front of the weather,

options and futures became a gamble

the best informed would always win until,

beneath their own noses, the agora

filled with blood and the usual speeches,

when some chancers made a killing on wheat.

Athena smiles offstage. Neat equations

crumble. The beastly entrails never lie.

Swooping in from east or west, random flocks

scribble secrets across a vellum sky.