‘God’s Brain’ by Peter Wild (1940-2009)

    
    
This is what happens to God’s thoughts

                                    as they become more secular,

         for uncounted ages a white mass

                                        of seething cottage cheese

                                 expanding over the lovely altiplano

                and doing exactly what it has to do

                                                   entirely happy with itself,

until reaching the edge of the table

                                gobs of it begin falling off,

                  dropping there, the hills of Barstow, California,

                          beside the rusted railroad

                                                  along the sandy river,

      the sulfurous curd

                       of its own permanent sunset.

And the people living there now?

                                   They have a vague memory

           from childhood of once having escaped from the circus.

       If you ask them, they won’t say

                that the Great Buddha himself sometimes hurried,

            but as they stand there thinking about it

                        you can see the possibility

                                                  quivering on their lips.

(published in Permafrost, vol. 17, 1995)