I understand

[elviaje26]

Edit one

I understand.

It is the will of God
for the strong to advance
and the inept to vanish.
I dare not beg your reconsideration.
I sure wish things were different.
To my core, nothing
I mean nothing 
is more sacred
than efficiency.
In your hands you hold
all men’s dignity,
all men’s purpose,
all men’s peace of mind. 
Without you,
A man has no task to accomplish,
no place to be,
and no role to fulfill.
You are more powerful
than a general,
more wise 
than a judge,
and more godly
than a preacher.

To say that I respect you
would be an understatement.
I don't accept your discernment.
I worship your discernment.
In the last days,
all men will bow down to you. 
In the last days
You will take us away from death.
In the last days
You will finally bring us to ultimate
efficiency.


Persevere.

original-

I understand.

It is the will of God

for the strong to advance

and the inept to vanish.

I dare not beg your reconsideration.

I sure wish things were different.

To my core, nothing

I mean nothing

is more sacred

than efficiency.

In your hands you hold

all men’s dignity,

all men’s purpose,

all men’s peace of mind.

Without you,

society has no place to be,

no task to do,

and no role to fulfill.

You are more powerful

than a general,

more wise

than a judge,

and more godly

than a preacher.

To say that I respect you

would be an understatement.

I don't accept your discernment.

I worship your discernment.

Please carry on the purpose.

[dukealien]

Edit one

I understand.

It is the will of God
for the strong to advance
and the inept to vanish.
I dare not beg your reconsideration.
I sure wish things were different.
To my core, nothing
I mean nothing 
is more sacred
than efficiency.
In your hands you hold
all men’s dignity,
all men’s purpose,
all men’s peace of mind. 
Without you,
A man has no task to accomplish,
no place to be,
and no role to fulfill.
You are more powerful
than a general,
more wise 
than a judge,
and more godly
than a preacher.

To say that I respect you
would be an understatement.
I don't accept your discernment.
I worship your discernment.
In the last days,
all men will bow down to you. 
In the last days
You will take us away from death.
In the last days
You will finally bring us to ultimate
efficiency.


Persevere.


(snip)

A very thought-provoking poem.  Depending upon who we take the speaker to be, the meaning changes.

If we take the easiest speaker (a person addressing God), the tone could be transparently (and frighteningly) devotional, or ironic.

If we choose another option (the speaker is Science, or the Machine) and the party addressed is Evolution, God, the uncaring universe, Science, or the Machine, interpretations and tones differ.  But in that matrix, the two tones remain devotional and ironic.  One could even read the poem as God addressing Himself, and not necessarily the Christian God.  On a more earth(l)y plain, it could be a woman addressing a man, or a failing offspring addressing the parent.

The tone is set by the reader's understanding (g) of the first and last lines:  is "I understand" said reverentially/with acceptance, or ironically/with hidden denial?

The ambiguity is very interesting.  Some might prefer more hints as to who the author means to be speaking, and whom addressed, but I like it very well as is.

Suggestion:  "I sure wish things were different" jars because it's informal/colloquial where the rest of the poem is quite formal in tone.  You could almost say, "I do wish things were different" despite its slight archaism; perhaps, "I wish these things were different," or the like.

An interesting and complicated concept.  Good!

[Achebe]

This is pretty good for "Novice". I liked the first six lines, and L5 in particular.
But after that alas, it read like prose with line breaks.
The other issue that I have is that it's not clear from the text in what sense G_d is after "efficiency" - blind obedience, check. Ego massaging, check. But not "efficiency".

[Emz]

Edit one

I understand. (I like how this is separate from the main verse; it's like you have a simplified poem within the poem, one that simply says "I understand. Preserve.")

It is the will of God
for the strong to advance
and the inept to vanish. (two theories that were never incompatible, brought together in three lines: that's just my small observation which I like)  
I dare not beg your reconsideration. (is the narrator speaking to God here, or to somebody else? my impression after re-reading is that it is to God, but the first line refers to him as if he is not present in the conversation. If the narrator is speaking to God, perhaps there needs to be a line after the first three lines to provide clarity in narrative)
I sure wish things were different.
To my core, nothing
I mean nothing 
is more sacred
than efficiency.
In your hands you hold
all men’s dignity,
all men’s purpose,
all men’s peace of mind. 
[Without you,
A man has no task to accomplish,
no place to be,
and no role to fulfill.] (I wouldn't agree with the content, however I do find this part thought provoking from a philosophical perspective.)
[You are more powerful
than a general,
more wise 
than a judge,
and more godly
than a preacher.] (If the narrator is speaking to God, perhaps "more godly than a preacher" doesn't truly drive the point home) Maybe you could change this part to something like:
More powerful than a general,
wiser than a judge.
(remove the "you are" to make it tighter)

To say that I respect you
would be an understatement. (maybe remove these two lines; understatements don't work well with poetry)
I don't accept your discernment. (semi-colon may work better here)
I worship your discernment.
In the last days,
all men will bow down to you. 
In the last days
You will take us away from death.
In the last days
You will finally bring us to ultimate
efficiency.


Persevere.

.

Dear elviaje26,

I enjoyed this poem. The first 9 lines are definitely your strongest. I hope my comments above help.

[Erthona]

To me this starts as a satire:

"It is the will of God
for the strong to advance
and the inept to vanish."

This is almost straight out of Nietzsche's Will to Power" and would have less to do with the will of God, than the existential drive in humanity. So this first sentence defines this as the voice of an existentialist, not a worshiper of God, thus also establishing the tone as sarcastic, whether this was the intent or not.

Again, there is language that this contrary to the poem "I sure wish things were different." Up until this line the writing had at least the appearance of formality to it. AT this point "Aw shucks" shows up for some reason quite beyond my comprehension. But then it does lead into this line,

"I mean nothing is more sacred than efficiency."

Spoken with the wit of Goober upon returning from a Tony Robbins class.

Although as with any piece it has it's problems, it is a decent piece of writing except it loses any value as it lacks context. "Gulliver's Travels" and "Don Quixote" were two of the greatest pieces of satire every written, yet they would have simply been fanciful pieces of writing had the target of the venom been unknown.

For me anyway, the great failure here is the reader does not know to whom this attack is pointed, thus it becomes a flightless bird, an oddity, but one that never soars.

dale

[will]

Excellent stuff, strange and unnerving. It’s true enough that it jars with Christian notions of god, but then they are hardly the only ones available. This has a feel of “Hawk Roosting” by Hughes, a similar psychopathic air of certainty, the theology of a killer.

Yes “I sure wish things were different” does fall jarringly, we’ are suddenly on Walton mountain for a second before landing back in the almost machine like coldness of the piece. I am also randomly tempted to mess with the line “You will take us away from death” and flip it into “you will take death away from us” or even “steal death away from us”, but I offer that only as an example of my own profound wrongheadedness rather than a suggestion.
If I were to set about changing it, though it needs next to no changes for me, I would amp up the bleakness, the grimness of it: sometimes a poem is just a voice speaking and it owes us no explanations. On that level this is superb.