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# The Tower of Babylon
- URL: https://www.hawkword.com/poetry/the-tower-of-babylon/
- Published: 2021-12-27T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2021-12-27T12:00:00.000Z
- Description: let us now dally and converse we have both means and time on Babylon, its famous curse and the preceding crime (I'm surely not alone in thinking the tale requires a bit of winking building a tower to the sky? to take...
- Author: A. Gee
- Tags: Poetry, Allpoetry Import, #Import 2026-04-25 19:56

let us now dally and converse  
we have both means and time  
on Babylon, its famous curse  
and the preceding crime  
(I'm surely not alone in thinking  
the tale requires a bit of winking  
building a tower to the sky?  
to take the gods on? my oh my)

me thinks a simpler explanation  
behind the age old curse  
more likely it was God's frustration  
with poems in free verse  
and -- this is hard to counteract  
the final straw may be abstract

I'm guessing there are cuneiforms  
(although I lack the uniform)  
that would confirm my version  
of the divine aversion  
to claiming something is a poem  
from Solomon to Rehoboam  
and not to mention Alighieri  
unless it's extra-ordinary  
it may as well be just a story  
and layered up, a tower  
and in this divine allegory  
you can't have that much power

why don't you take this simple test  
read it out loud -- I do not jest  
could you remember it, recite  
its lines from A to Z?  
Like ever? Ever? Then no might  
can ban its memory  
but if it's adjectives galore  
each preening like a metaphor  
and rambling sentences, run on  
then for the love of God, begone

some languages call it a tongue  
and words, they're our dessert  
words that are aching to be sung  
and though we come from dirt  
we build our towers to the sky  
it's not for gods to question why  
it's not above our station

but pray they have a strong foundation