Arrogant Prophecies - The Scarecrow Speaks

"The Scarecrow Speaks" is strange in that it seems to conflate personal and subjective experience with general and objective experience.

Judging from other material attributed to the unknown poet of the Third Galaxy, it would seem that "Soft as snow the powder falls..." refers to the promises of childhood which are all too often betrayed and broken -- this will become more apparent in later installments.

On the other hand, the poem does seems to talk about a world wide event where survivors hang on to a pitiful existence of some sort in shelters. Still, it could also be seen as a picture of the loneliness, the true hell of being separated from our common humanity. In any case, the unknown poet's own commentary here is, once again, both short and cryptic.

What I can understand from the various commentators is that the unknown poet's view is that the subjective is not separate from the objective. The two are entertwined and nourish each other. If one understands the subjective, one must also garner insights into the objective. This is why poets often show flashes of prolepsis -- it is an, albeit troublesome, frequent side effect of understanding.

Soft as snow, the powder falls,
far below, a witless scarecrow sits and calls:

"For love, for mercy, for God's sake!
Don't leave me here, alone, with nothing left to fake!

"I used to be a little boy
and I played with all the usual kinds of boy's toys"

"But now, these past seventeen years,
I've lived alone, with all my well-grounded fears."

"None are left to comfort me,
and those who could have gone away eternally."

"Or else, like me, have hid so as not to taste
the dry, grey dust which falls and lays life waste."

"O my God! What is this ape,
which murders, burns, kills and rapes the land, the earth --
our Mother, the very scene of birth!

I hear Heaven gasp, "Its pretty name is now a curse!"

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"What is this ape..." indeed! The devil which religious charlatans cream in their jeans over is not some supernatural creature from Hell's non-dimensional world. It is that part of our nature which will destroy us and possibly our planet as well if we do not learn to recognize it for what it is -- our Shadow!