Reflections on God and Religion

THE FIRST BOOK.

The swift bullet howls as it tears through the air;
The sky, filled with thunder and lightning—what is that roar
But the bursting of air and clouds,
Through the clash of heat and cold, pressing against one another?
And this saltpeter-air original: "salpeterlucht" – the gas produced by ignited gunpowder, in the pregnant metal A poetic reference to a loaded cannon,
Crammed to the point of bursting; how it vomits lead and steel
Upon its enemies, in storming or in boarding original: "enteren" – a naval term for boarding an enemy ship!
How it demolishes locks, and sends fleets flying in splinters, grit, and shreds!
If the "red rooster" A traditional Dutch idiom for fire ignites a hellish mine,
How the belly of the earth bellows! How the air shrinks in pain,
Before it gives birth to a ruin of human flesh and ramparts!
How the earth thunders and quakes before it collapses,
When the swirling of the winds churns against itself
Within her bosom, struggling for breath, and feels
No relief, until the pregnant earth, in its delivery,
Bears a chaos original: "baiert" – a state of confusion or primordial mass, and destroys city, mountain, rock, and woods,
And wastes stream and field, and hurls everything into a heap,
So that for whole miles, the people take to their heels!
Also, this great universe original: "groot begrijp" cannot endure a vacuum original: "ydelheit" – nature's supposed abhorrence of a void:
This is proven: for when the air is sucked out of a pipe,
The pipe then grips the tongue. No wine-jug sinks to the bottom,
If the wine-jug is plunged into the water mouth-first.
Even if one submerges the jug, it will keep the water out
By the element of air. The syringe shall spray water,
And swallow it, as if from thirst or a blue dropsy,
By means of the expelled air and the inhaled air.
The wine-transferrer can thus move the wines,
Contained from full tuns into an empty vessel,
And blow Rhenish wine, or the French grape-juice,
With his bellows out of the full and into the empty vessel.
The wine-pump drinks the wine, whether it is choice or lesser,
And it does not flow out, if one, with a finger at the top,
Covers the open vent-hole original: "luchtoor" – literally "air-ear," the hole used to regulate pressure, and shuts and stops it tight
Against the air, after which no liquid flows or drops down,

B