Something dark within it, its first element or circuit?
Did it surface first in Cain, offering unfavored,
downcast brother-killer in the wide-mouthed field?

No, but it wept there. No keeper. Yielder of crops no longer.
He was made restless across the earth instead. Wanderer
hidden from His presence, unbearably concealed.

Marked in the land of Nod, Cain became a magnate,
bond trader sadly raising a child and buildings, became
a necessary builder of a city that shared his child’s name.

Technological Man, then, as we seek to understand it?
Wasn’t the very attack Abel suffered a most skillful handling,
carried out by one wielding a facilitating implement?

Was it offered with a filament carried to faraway futures,
being our quaint past, inciting still our daily comforts?
We should want nothing better in a techne, however murderous.

Or: obviously this debases the thing, merely potentially dark.
The artisans’ hands that built the ark were just so inclined,
but, their work mandated, refrained from accomplishment’s lust.

Let’s not mistake the good thing—the reason and rationale
that caps the term, logy, our nobly disposable circumstance—
for its bloody version, mindless outburst lacking resistance,

corrupting precision, and making of “premeditation” the worst
of words. And so this our fair city, which we built, was destined
to canker, ever in need of renovations. Or interventions, better yet.