A Little Ink More or Less!
A Little Ink More or Less! - meaning Summary
Doubt and Irreverent Longing
The poem presents a skeptical speaker who rejects petty consolations—books, ceremonies, and theological trinkets—as insufficient to explain suffering. The voice mocks institutional religiosity and asks bluntly whether such ordered rituals constitute God. Frustrated, the speaker demands a more visceral sign of divine or infernal reality, even preferring a grotesque, tangible emblem of corruption to abstract assurance. The closing question "Where is God?" leaves the poet’s doubt unresolved.
Read Complete AnalysesA little ink more or less! I surely can't matter? Even the sky and the opulent sea, The plains and the hills, aloof, Hear the uproar of all these books. But it is only a little ink more or less. What? You define me God with these trinkets? Can my misery meal on an ordered walking Of surpliced numskulls? And a fanfare of lights? Or even upon the measured pulpitings Of the familiar false and true? Is this God? Where, then, is hell? Show me some bastard mushroom Sprung from a pollution of blood. It is better. Where is God?
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