The Clever Children?

The Clever Children

by Philip Gross

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

                                               Their father

teased them on their way to bed.

They lay awake for hours, those clever 

children.  Then one little egghead said,

"Inside the shell the embryonic hen

has got all her cells in her, even the cell

of her egg, within which... So on, in, on

in time to the smallest conceivable."  Well,

now they couldn't sleep.  They had to see

the ultimate egg, the egg of the future. On the way

how many breakages, unwanted omelettes, casually

discarded chickens?  At last, there it lay.

so tiny, so precious, so shimmeringly slight

it made them feel tremendous, like a pride

of giants.  Now to sleep, but... "Wait!"

said one (yes), ""What's inside?"

So they split it.  What hatched out?

"Quick," they hollered, "put it back again."

But those clever children couldn't, not

with all the king's horses, all the king's men.

This poem, by Philip Gross, is one I have loved for many years, but it does not seem to be anywhere in cyberspace.  Maybe it's just that I can't find it - but I felt it ought to be out there and so have decided to blog it.  I hope I have transcribed it accurately. It only exists for me in a faded clipping from an old magazine that probably went out of print years ago.

The poet says so much, succinctly and, wonderfully, in Humpty Dumpty language, about cleverness unguided by wisdom and love.  And typing it up reminded me of a talk I heard at a Kingdom Hall some years ago in which the Speaker pointed out that if Jehovah had not confused the languages at Babel we, the human family, would have reached the madness of weapons of mass destruction before the Messiah had even come to the earth and paid the ransom.

Jehovah had to patiently select and train a people, and choose from them a faithful family, before he could entrust his only-begotten Son to their care.

And the Speaker then asked us to think about how, ever since 1914, scientists the world over have increasingly been able to communicate with one another.  The results?  Some wonderful advances for which we are all grateful, but haven't we also bought the earth to the verge of ruin - see the poem above?

What we have to hang on to now is Jehovah's promise the he will "bring to ruin those ruining the earth".  He is the very Source of wisdom, and of power.  And he is the fulfiller of all his promises, as we can demonstrate to you if you will accept a free home Bible study from us.

I put "egg" into the search engine of Col's Photo gallery, and selected this rather lovely Song Thrush egg to head the blog.

The cars and the Green were frosted over on Friday morning, and it has inspired a small poem - maybe a verse - that I plan to put in my next blogpost. And my "good" shoulder has now completely seized up. I can barely type and will probably have to appear at the mornings meeting as a blank square with my name on it in Zoom if I can't get myself dressed in time.

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