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A Creation Myth

The curtain opens. A million violins
Crescendo. Trumpets blare. A single drum
Beat booms. In perfect time, the cosmos spins.
The Hero enters, sees what soon must come:

A surging wave of life heads towards destruction—
Its iridescent droplets all are stars.
He shrinks his body down and flies into action,
With mercy’s force extends commanding arms.

A grain of sand before a vast tsunami,
He stands and moves so quickly all turns slow.
He summons from the wave his troops—his family.
Their flowing bodies, formed of stars, still glow.

“The Golden Age has ceased! Disaster looms!”
He yells, “We must drop to the human plane
To stem the wave that pushes to your dooms!
Spread out! Every part must be contained!”

The drum beat shakes the stage and they shrink down
So quickly that they quake with speeding force.
The Hero’s with them as they near the ground
And close in on disaster’s earthly source.

These gods, whom he created in his image,
Now do their own creating. He used light
And stars while they use clay that’s firm and dim
To sculpt the earth into a human height.

Another movement starts slow, softly builds.
The gods sent down to near the wave’s beginning
Are inspired by the sea and therefore will
Into existence, plane-like forms, spinning

Out of clay flat faces, noses small,
And eyes like slits, at one with vast expanses
Stretching on and on, connecting all
The currents that the Sea of Life advances.

These are the Asians, wise yet not emerged
In full-flesh form. The woodwinds soothe, but then
The tempo quickens. More creations surge:
Each group of men unique from other men

With strengths and weaknesses, all perfect for
The wave-part they inhabit. White men lead
Upon the crest. Strong Black men hold the core
Within and move with excellence in speed.

And while the wave moves on, their job is not
To push it forward. No, the gods anoint
Earth’s kings to rule and regulate each spot
And always with one cleaner hand to point

The way back to the origin of life,
Where calm and open seas roll on forever
Uncrushed beneath dissatisfaction’s strife,
Fulfilled, full-loved within the grand endeavor.

But now the kings are all ignored, the gods
Emasculated, the Hero long forgotten.
The wave and cymbals soon will be at odds
With civilization, crashing all that’s rotten.

Then what flows back intact will be those who
Knew how to hang on to what’s good and true.

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Evan Mantyk teaches literature and history in New York and is Editor of the Society of Classical Poets. His most recent books of poetry are Heroes of the East and West, and a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 

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17 Responses

  1. James Sale

    Thanks for this Evan: there are few things more interesting than creation/Creation myths and you have certainly mixed a pot of them here! I like the structure and especially the way you end the poem – the darkest hour is just before the dawn – and so, heroically, we need “to hang on to what’s good and true”. A great thought to encourage us all to face the new 2025! Thanks again.

    Reply
    • Evan Mantyk

      Thanks, James. I’m glad you think it worked. Even though my poems are short, I find myself gravitating toward an epic style. You are someone writing a real epic in terms of length, which I can see would be very demanding to do. I’m glad this measured up.

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Evan, there are some amazing philosophical thoughts regarding creation and creators at work to mold and fashion all life forms from their own familiar models including mankind and its diversity. My thought upon reading this was what a great movie or television series this would make and inspire thoughts about what we term “divine” selecting a place to replicate in one place cosmic considerations. Especially trenchant to me was the concept of establishment, but then the permissive evolution that would occur into the future. The writing is great, powerful, thought-provoking, and creative. The ending provides the consummate concept for believers who rely on divinity in the cosmos to remove them from “civilization, crashing all that’s rotten.”

    Reply
    • Evan Mantyk

      Thank you, Roy! Maybe we can get Andrew to make a movie out of it! (I’m sure he is too busy.) I often wish I could go into movie making and I try to achieve that in verse.

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    The striking thing in Evan’s poem is the way he links all creation stories with images of symphonic music: violins, trumpets, drums, woodwinds, cymbals, tempo, crescendo. And this powerful music is the backdrop to creative force combined with violence and upheaval. It’s almost Wagnerian in its atmosphere!

    Many creation myths involve violence: the ancient Germans said the world was created when the primal Man killed his twin brother, and made the world from his corpse. The Greeks said that Earth and Sky mated, engendering the Titans and from them the gods, causing two massive wars. Human males were created by Prometheus as a pestilence to annoy the gods, and females were created by the gods to be a torment to men.

    Evan’s main image seems to be that of a massive tsunami-like “Wave” that rushes onward, carrying new beings for a new world. Eventually the wave settles down to calm, regularity, and order. He ends the poem with the thought that even all this creation will also be swept away in turn as things decline from their original strength. This myth is a profoundly cyclical one, suggesting an unending rhythm of creation, decline, destruction, and rebirth.

    Reply
    • Evan Mantyk

      That’s an incredibly perceptive reading, Joe. Thank you for sharing it. There are indeed elements of chaos and violence. Even deeper is the cyclical nature of civilization, as you have unearthed here. Wagner sounds just about right, though I was thinking more of Beethoven while writing.

      Reply
  4. Dan J Tuton

    Evan, the imagery of your poem dramatically reminds me (as it did Dr. Salemi) of a Wagnerian opera, particularly Götterdämmerung. Hope for ultimate peaceful resolution (as opposed to dissolution) is also a theme I feel at the core of my heart.

    Reply
  5. Brian A. Yapko

    What an amazing poem, Evan, rich in a mythological imagery — much of it Eastern-inspired and expressed through musical and marine imagery — which explains the creation and categorization of the human race and the harmony proper recognition of each race’s contribution may ideally bring forward.

    “Harmony” is an important word here as you have associated creation with a celestial symphonic sound which (given that highlighted solo drumbeat) suggests (for me, at least) the solemn and iconic opening measures of Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” and its associations both in Zoroastrian religion and, through 2001 A Space Odyssey, the vastness and promise of the cosmos.

    But the musical imagery is dominated by the sea imagery, which is presented as dual-natured. The tsunami is a destroyer but the sea is very much the source of life as well. It is active and churning and its waves carry forth humanity in a way where race is relevant to its nature but not its movement or force. There is a whole theology here which describes how we as humans are part of God but not His movers — we are carried along by Him wheresoever He wills. As are the gods who the Creator of gods created as gods and who are at the mercy of a cosmic tsunami which necessitated their dropping down to Earth. I find echoes here of the Hindu mythology concerning the Ocean of Churning Milk and its role in Creation.

    All of the mythology you relate ultimately comes to a turning point with the devolution of human culture and nature under the force of their own narcissistic neglect: dissatisfaction’s strife.” which leads to the kings being ignored, the gods emasculated, the Hero long forgotten such that even that which allowed for Creation will inexorably lead to disharmony and the entropic dissipation of all that is good and worthy. There is indeed an apocalyptic aspect to the very end in which the cosmic music and its harmony which are associated with Creation must now preside over the destruction of everything that is rotten.

    That is, perhaps, a good thing for when the waves come forward and destroy, they will (almost like in the Noah story) yet leave intact those few things which are good. There is a cyclic quality to the tsunami of destruction which you describe which is fascinating and strangely comforting. Your poem suggests that human attitudes and action are actually more important than we might have earlier realized. We ignore the gifts we have been given at our peril. It would behoove us to hang on to what we know is good and true. There is great wisdom here which is much needed in this cynical age of lies, relativism and narcissism.

    Reply
    • Evan Mantyk

      That’s an inspired reading, Brian. Thank you for it! Strauss’s Space Odyssey anthem does capture the epic beat effect well. I had not consciously thought of it, but you are right. Well said: “Your poem suggests that human attitudes and action are actually more important than we might have earlier realized.” Yes, there is something in this poem of exploring what is tied up in boring old traditions, what a spectacular world there is in them.

      Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Evan, you’ve packed much activity into this myth! With it, the Legend of the Emerald Queen, and some of the heroes in your book, you’re becoming a prominent mythographer. A cosmologist I’ve heard says, “What’s more interesting than origins?” The strokes here are broad, fast, and strong. And the sweep of the story is long, though told quickly. That’s one thing with which tales of creation impress me. They get so much done so rapidly, yet when we come down to investigate tiny aspects of small creatures, these are too complex to understand how they could have come to be. Thus creation narratives need a fertile source as well as a living force. Yours is beautifully depicted in stanza 12. Even though it’s only half of a complete sentence, it serves as a figure for “what’s good and true,” those things to be held on to when an end arrives. With primal sea and musical sound, everything begins. Sound and meter make a poem! A poem of comparison for this one is John Dryden’s “Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, 1687.” It starts off, “From harmony, from heavenly harmony/This universal frame began,” and moves onward to the triple rhymed end of The Grand Chorus: “The trumpet shall be heard on high/The dead shall live, the living die/And music shall untune the sky.”

    Reply
    • Evan Mantyk

      Thank you, Margaret! I remember an intense fascination with Greek mythology when young. I was unaware of this Dryden piece. I believe it was written to be set to music. I’m listening to Handel’s take on it now, courtesy of your insightful comments. Another Handel work that I love is Alexander’s Feast, which is ultimately, and wondrously, hijacked by a celebration honoring St. Cecilia.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Both the 1687 “Song” and “Alexander’s Feast” in 1697 were texts to be set to music for the London Society of Saint Cecilia. When Dryden received the second commission ten years after the first, he had to outdo himself, and therefore chose Alexander as a fresh triumphant subject, though the project was all along aimed at producing a grand concert honoring Cecilia on her feast day of November 22. I’ve always been more interested in the poems, but now that you tell me of the Handel music, I’ll need to listen.

  7. Paul A. Freeman

    Epic. The final couplet and the preceding stanza are very poignant.

    I’m reminded of the film ‘Enemy at the Gates’, about the siege of Stalingrad, where Bob Hoskins, playing Nikita Khrushchev, asks for a hero – and gets one!

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
  8. Yael

    This is a splendid creation myth and the musicality of it draws me right in, where I can appreciate the imaginative scenes. Starting off with a million violins and going on to some wave surfing works well for me, thank you for this.

    Reply
  9. Adam Sedia

    This is an interesting and impressive work. Its sweeping scope has something of the epic, and it makes good use of metaphor with the stage and music. It tells a message that needs to be heard — that runs contrary to what the dominant narrative dictates, but which I think more and more people are beginning to grasp: ours is a time of interruption of the natural flow of creation.

    Reply

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