I have been asked a number of times what my reasons were for writing this poem, and whether I identify myself with the narrator or with the Gnostic. Other readers have asked whether I am against technology, and in particular AI. A few wanted to know if the clochard himself was a real character (or at least inspired by a real one) or a purely literary construct. Last but not least, I have been asked whether I am, literally, a gnostic.
The answer to all those questions is: “it does not matter.” What the poet believes—his reasons for writing, his fears and contradictions—is of no consequence. What matters is the poem. If the clochard has touched your heart, if the voice of the Gnostic has resonated with you in any way, then the poem makes sense.
And all the rest is irrelevant.
(I)
The Clochard
The creator of this world is demented,
says the clochard
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
He has been there all spring,
surrounded by his garbage
and his books.
The world is not as it appears,
he claims.
There is a veil obscuring it,
set there by the deranged deity.
People often stop to chat—
or rather, to listen to his preaching.
There is another, better realm,
he asserts,
a realm of God,
and we must all try
to return there.
He doesn’t seem deranged,
nor drunk, either.
He looks like a cross
between a rock star
and a Templar.
Our true lives,
he tells me,
stretch thousands of years into the past.
We can be made to remember
our origin
in the stars.
Yes, I agree—
we are made of the stuff
spilled out by a supernova
in its death throes.
But otherwise,
our origin
is a crazy, violent monkey
with an oversized brain.
He insists—
that’s only
the lesser part of ourselves.
Each of us has
a divine, unfallen counterpart.
Even the butchers at Auschwitz?
Even the monsters
who decapitated babies
in the kibbutz?
He shakes his beautiful head.
The bleakness,
the evil,
the pain of this world—
he says—
are the doings
of the demented creator.
I wonder if he has a point.
Perhaps Troy,
and Carthage,
Hiroshima,
and Gaza,
were all erased
by the machinations
of the Demiurge.
But what if,
I ask him,
the simpler truth
is the absence of gods?
What if
we have only ourselves
to blame
for all the pain,
all the evil?
He lights a joint,
takes a puff,
and offers it to me—
perhaps echoing
the gesture of Jesus
breaking bread
with his disciples.
Too much evil,
he says.
It can’t be
us.
We are simply
prisoners
of the false god.
He waves for me to sit,
heats water
on a camping stove,
pours it into two cups,
drops in little sachets.
“Orange tea,”
he declares.
The taste is delicious—
familiar and strange,
like the whole moment:
the evening’s soft light,
the crisp air,
the sudden silence,
and the clochard—
or messiah—
who says,
as if reading my mind:
Can you feel it?
The other realm is here.
You can pass
from this prison world
into the peaceful kingdom—
if the True God
places you
under His grace.
He doesn’t explain, though,
how to achieve such a feat.
Apparently,
it requires the faith
granted to the seer—
while I am just
one of the blind.
No salvation, perhaps,
except
in the beauty
of this fleeting moment.
We smoke another joint,
delighting in the tea
and the day’s dying light.
(II)
Old, Vengeful Men
The creator of this world is demented,
says the clochard
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
He is an old, vengeful man,
who has filled the world
with old, vengeful men—
men who defile its beauty and harmony.
Old, vengeful men, he says,
who send the young to war—
like Kronos devouring his own children.
Men who preach piety
while murdering innocent girls
for the crime of walking unveiled.
Men who slam shut
the doors of hospitals to the poor,
while gilding the arches for the rich.
They are everywhere, he says—
cold, cruel, narcissistic,
terrified of their own mortality.
And in their fear, they break and burn—
like spoiled children, like mad kings,
they kill and destroy.
It has always been so,
says my friend, the clochard—
Nero singing to the cinders of Rome,
Stalin sending his people to the Gulag,
Mao drowning them
in the famine of the Great Leap Forward.
And still it is so, he asserts—
old men planned
the slaughter of infants in the kibbutz,
and old, vengeful men now exact the price
in the blood of innocent women and children,
in a tortured strip of the Promised Land.
Old men who send masked thugs
to kidnap decent people—
those who clean their latrines
and serve their tables.
Old men, madly attempting
to become immortal,
searching in vain
for the fount of eternal youth.
(III)
The Gospel of the Metaverse
The creator of this world is demented,
says the clochard
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
And he has devised a plan to ruin
all that is worthy and beautiful,
all that is true.
He has sent his legions of devils
to secret places hidden beneath the hills
of Silicon Valley.
From there, they rule us.
First, they took away our freedom,
chaining us to flat screens.
Then they stole reality,
replacing it, little by little,
with virtual worlds of spite.
The great lie hides in plain sight—
people even pay to be enslaved
to the rock where vultures feast on their entrails.
He asks for my phone. I hand it to him.
He puts on gloves before touching it—
as if to avoid infection.
Gloved, but deft, his fingers move.
He scrolls through Twitter and TikTok,
through Instagram and Tinder,
pointing at the silly stories—
all planned, he claims, to drink the minds
of watchers, as vampires drink blood.
He shows me angry tweets,
furious fights, digital lynchings—
all in the name of righteousness.
And then, the sad messages:
lonely souls casting bottles into the Net,
like desperate Robinsons.
It’s all planned, he says. One day
we may no longer know the difference
between the world and its tenebrous shadow.
And then the demented god
will send his son—
the Antichrist—
to preach
the gospel of the Metaverse.
(IV)
The Island of the Gods (Iceland)
The creator of this world is demented,
says the clochard
camped at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
And he reigns everywhere—
except on an island
where the Nordic gods once dwelled.
The Nordic gods, says the Gnostic,
also emanated from the True God—
not as formidable as the Demiurge,
but mighty upon their own land.
So when the false god sent his false angels,
they rose to meet him bravely.
To the cruel swords of the winged legions
they opposed fiery dragons breathing sacred flame,
and giant trolls hurling mountains at the invaders.
When the Demiurge froze the land with ice,
Odin melted it with the eruption
of a thousand volcanoes.
The false Archangel Gabriel fought to the death with Thor,
and in their struggle
the world became a ball of red lava.
Many died, says my friend the clochard.
You can still see them, scattered through the ranges—
the bodies of brave trolls,
turned to stone;
the skeletons of dragons,
black as the fire they once breathed;
the blood of green giants,
stained across the valleys.
Thor too died that day—
together with Odin and Freyja,
and all the Nordic gods.
The Norse remembered this tragedy
and called it Ragnarök.
But the demented god was banished forever from that land.
Beautiful and desolate, the island sleeps,
wrapped in mist.
I know this place, says the Gnostic.
I have walked valleys carpeted with green moss,
growing from the blood of giants.
I have seen lava fields made of dragon bones,
smelled the sulphurous breath
that still rises from the broken earth.
I have beheld vast glaciers
and savage volcanoes
that still play their ancient game
of ice and fire.
I have walked that land without gods
and felt my soul swoon at its beauty,
while the self shrank to nothing.
We will be here, said the ice rivers.
We will be here, said the green ranges.
We will be here, said the volcanoes,
and the great boulders the giants hurled
against the false angels.
We will be here when you are gone and forgotten—
gone your sons, and the sons of your sons,
gone your people and their descendants,
gone all humankind—except
those who find the True God,
see through the thin veil,
learn their own irrelevance,
and in that knowledge
attain freedom.
(V)
Hell Is Here
The creator of this world is demented,
says the clochard
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
But nonetheless, he is still an emanation
of the True God.
The idea seems to puzzle him a little,
as we talk and drink orange tea.
And so it is with us—
beings begotten at once
from the love of God
and the spite of the Demiurge.
This is why, he says,
Hell is not needed.
It is here. It was created with us,
it was created within us.
“Look around,” he invites me,
handing me his pipe,
filled with sweet tobacco—and what else.
“Look around at all these people,
enslaved by the material trap,
the trap that chains us all.
Fire is not needed,” he says.
“Hell burns on money—
not sulphur, but power.”
Hell is here:
a place where the rich
sail in yachts as large as the Titanic,
while the poor drown on rafts.
A place where a few hoard it all,
while the many have nothing to go by.
A place devoid of compassion.
A place where everything—
and everyone—
has a price.
Hell is here,
within us.
But we can escape it, he promises,
though he never says how.
(VI)
Jesus
The creator of this world is demented,
says the clochard
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
And he has enslaved us to a mirror-world—
a world of shadow and madness
that we mistake for reality.
But we can be saved, he says,
by the love of Christ,
by the knowledge of Gnosis.
I ask him whether Jesus was a man.
“What else?” he replies—
a man of flesh and bone.
An impatient man who cursed the fig tree
simply because it failed to offer
its sweet fruit.
A fierce man who overturned the stalls
of peaceable merchants
selling their wares in the Temple yard.
A gentle man who loved children—
perhaps because he was still,
in some ways, a child himself.
A brave man who stood before the mob
and said: Let him who is without sin
cast the first stone.
A man of compassion, who wept
when the coffin of a boy passed by,
and said to the mother: Woman, do not cry.
I asked my friend if he performed miracles—
walked on water, multiplied bread and fish,
raised the dead.
“Any magician could do this,”
the Gnostic says. “Even raising the dead
is not so hard, if you know the lore.”
Jesus did not come to work wonders;
he simply could not help himself—
at times, he was overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed by our sorrow,
by lives spent in darkness
and utter desperation.
And he did not come to die for us.
There is no salvation in death,
no redemption in the Cross.
Instead, he came to show us the path—
to tear the Demiurge’s veil,
to let us see beyond the shadows.
(VII)
The Second Coming
And he will come again,
says the clochard
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
He will come quietly, without fanfare—
no rending sky, no divine trumpets,
no descent in power and glory.
In fact, he may have
already come. He may be here now,
with his angelic legions.
Angels with invisible wings,
indistinguishable from us—human,
unless you know how to look.
“Don’t you have a neighbour,” he asks me,
“who works all year in the hospital,
and spends his vacations in Africa?”
“How do you know?” I ask, surprised.
He shrugs, as if to say
that small miracles aren’t worth discussing.
“He’s a surgeon,” I say. “He and his friend
spend every summer in Zanzibar,
working in a children’s hospital.”
“And there’s the teacher,” he adds,
“who lives her life in the classroom—
an undeclared Templar monk.
The mother who never sleeps,
the father who works two jobs
to raise his children.”
“And so many others,” he says.
“They are everywhere,
ready to rise when Christ calls.”
And he will—soon,
my friend assures me, holding my hand
as if offering me his peace.
(VIII)
The Antichrist
But the Antichrist will also come,
says my friend, the Gnostic,
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
The Antichrist will not be a man,
but it will have absorbed the knowledge
of all the men and women
who posted their lives on the Internet.
It will know each of them—
and yet know no one; for the Antichrist
has no mind and no heart.
It is only an algorithm
running within a monstrous matrix.
A monstrous matrix, says my friend,
that imprisons every word ever cast into the Net,
every picture ever uploaded,
every idea, every song, every poem,
and every epitaph.
For the Antichrist has no feelings,
no mind of its own; it emanates
from the worst in us—
as we ourselves emanated
from the worst of the Demiurge.
And it comes to rule and to profit,
to extract and exploit, to chain and submit,
until we all become serfs
in its temple of bytes.
Yes, the Antichrist will reign
from its high throne in California,
while the planet burns—to feed
the power plants that animate the Beast.
(IX)
Armageddon
And then, Christ and the Antichrist will fight,
says the Gnostic,
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
And everyone on Earth
will join that battle.
Men will fight women—
those sluts who refused their proper place
in home and bed.
Women will fight men—
those violent, rapist thugs.
The young will battle the old—
pampered vampires sucking their blood;
and the old will confront
the vile, spoiled brats.
Whites will chase Blacks,
draped in their Ku Klux Klan attire;
Blacks will respond,
skinning their children alive.
The Muslims will crucify the Christians,
the Christians will burn the Jews,
and the Jews will bomb the Muslims.
The Hutus will massacre the Tutsis,
the Turks the Armenians,
the Spaniards the Aztecs,
the Aztecs the Toltecs,
the pale-faced men will hunt the Sioux,
and the Sioux the Shoshone.
The rich will feed on the poor,
and the poor will rise
and burn their cities.
The learned will despise the ignorant,
and the ignorant will lynch the learned.
And the world will burn
in the great flames of Armageddon.
(X)
The Children of the Connecticut School
It was all over the news.
A school in Connecticut.
The gunman was almost a kid—
and he killed
twenty children, no older than ten,
many younger than five.
He killed twenty kids,
then killed his own mother,
then shot himself.
I went to see my friend, the Gnostic,
who camps at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
And I told him: tonight my daughter
dreamed of horses galloping by the sea.
And I asked him—tell me,
who dreams of horses
in the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school?
I told him about my son, thin as an elf,
his auburn hair, his almond eyes.
Yesterday I took him to the chess club.
He won his match.
I was so proud I could barely contain myself.
And I asked my friend, the clochard,
camped at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue:
tell me—who is playing chess today
in the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school?
My girl, I said, still believes
the world is full of magic.
Her long fingers fly on the piano.
Tell me—who plays piano today
in the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school?
I was there, holding my wife’s hand,
when my daughter came into the world—
her eyes open and black as burning coals.
She gripped my finger fiercely,
that little monkey, that hairy angel.
I stepped out for a moment,
into the desert parking lot,
the quiet evening of early fall.
My feet barely touched the ground.
I breathed eternity.
Tell me—who is breathing today
in the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school?
Sometimes, when I am tired,
I slip into my boy’s bed at night.
He still sleeps with his giant buddy—
a cowboy, tall and thin as himself.
And I love him as much as I love
the little blue teddy bear
that my daughter still sleeps with.
Tell me about the buddies and the blue teddy bears
in the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school.
They are everywhere, my children—
their strong spirits fill the house with light and life.
I see them wherever I look;
their pictures fill the shelves and fill my heart.
Pictures of every year, every month, every day
sustain our hope.
I see them around me and within me.
If I stopped seeing them,
I would be blind;
I would walk through
the coldest winter of discontent.
Tell me about the winter coming
to the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school.
I ask for an answer, but he has none.
The Gnostic holds my hand
and does not mention the shadow world,
or the Demiurge,
who puts a gun in the hands of a child
so he can kill other children
before killing himself.
No moral lesson today.
No lecture.
No imposed hope.
We simply cry together.
Tell me—
who will not be crying today
in the houses of the children
of the Connecticut school?
(XI)
The Rose will bloom again
But not all is lost,
says the clochard
who used to camp at the corner of Rue Mouffetard
and Fontaine Lartigue.
Not all is lost, he whispers
from his hospital bed—
(the police say the attackers
stabbed him just for fun;
the doctors fear
he won’t recover).
Not all is lost, he says—
(how on earth does he still manage
to smile?)
Not all is lost, because Jesus
will stand by the mothers
protecting their children,
will stand by the wives
protecting their husbands,
will stand by the sons
protecting their fathers,
and by the grandfathers
protecting them all.
He will stand by the doctor
who saved that baby,
by the firefighters
who saved that forest,
by the priest
who held the gates
when the barbarians came.
Jesus will defend the teachers
and the poets,
the secret lovers
and the dispossessed.
He will stand by those who try and fail,
and try again the next day.
By those who cannot sleep
when the baby coughs,
and who will not sleep either—
too happy to leave the room—
when the baby dreams of horses.
He will stand by the young woman
who spends the night awake,
solving math problems
as if dawn would come
with death and powder.
And by the young boy
who sleepwalks to the factory,
thinking of her.
He will stand by Hyacinthus and Sappho,
and forgive Achilles—
only for his love of Patroclus,
and for the tears he shed
over the body of Penthesilea.
And the rose, he says,
holding my hand—
the rose
will bloom again from its cinders.
This text was originally published in A General Theory of Love, Juan José Gómez Cadenas’s Substack space. If you enjoyed it, subscribe to his newsletter to receive new poems and excerpts from this ongoing book, which for more than twenty years has explored love through multiple forms, times, and voices.
