When the last religion
confesses its atrocities
through the ages and
shuts down shop for good,
when the fiery preachers
and arrogant prophets
of the last religion step
down from their pulpits,
cough up their crimes,
cop to their hypocrisies,
not be heard from again,
when the jeremiahs
and end-of-the-worlders
of the last religion
trash their placards,
throw off their robes,
and dance naked through
sprinklers in the park,
when the militant fanatics
of the last religion
surrender their arms
and defuse their bombs
and abandon their rhetoric
to embrace life over death,
when the archaic rituals
of the last religion
are never performed
except as reenactments
in historical dramas,
we may inhabit a world
where humanity and
the sure light of reason
illuminate the dark.