All the work was numbered

As the work was numbered;

so was it set down.

…factotum omnium artium magister nullius…

By accident or design,

let the record bear witness:

all that we did was in thy name,

kudos, hubris, blood secrets and pain…

…all our invention, our night-black craft,
our vainglory in the light, everything we were and wanted,
the scales that, on our eyes’s looking, saw our faces 

reflected in some sanitising mirror, our smiles’ rictus,

our skins’ veneering tan hiding the pallor of concealment.

…nemo omnium artium magister est…

Our industry grew in the illusion of mastery but we were rough trade;

we scraped through the centuries and believed
we were kings and queens.

It was for higher ideals, pie-in-the-sky futures, castles in the air,

made of sand, fortresses, impregnable edifices and the machinery

of dominion over life as we knew it, as we defined it,

as we whittled it down to little more than

scraps and remnants;

delusions

of success, of wealth,

of what the truth of riches was,

these became the madness in our method,

how we could take and not return, make, destroy

and leave only broken pieces in useless heaps forever,

rotting and rusting, clanking in the poisoned wind we left to blow

over the unadmitted errors of our ways, our claims of triumph

as hollow as the void, weak as our grasp on love

or honour or any blessing save our own.

The work we did

and quantified as success,

was like the hairs upon our heads,

numbered and recorded, every line reckoned,

every sum totalled and made to balance

because we had invented every way

to count it, as we invented God

to take the blame.

© BH, 2022

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Something out of nothing. It was what we thought we were doing, all our making and breaking. Sadly, no. We've only been fooling ourselves all along. In the end we're just muddling along, making a complete bog of it all. Tant pis!