Devil's bane

The devil came to me last night and said that he'd lost his insight. 
"I can't see into the soul", he said, "anymore, there's just a hole."

I asked the devil whose inners he'd viewed, being delicate so not to be rude. 
He said, "I've seen them all. And the sight can only appall."

"In the grand scheme, I play a role. It is my lot to consume the soul. 
Now and then, a calamity I carve. But now what do I do? Starve?"

Our chat had got quite hot, you see his flames were leaping a lot. 
My cat was scared with hair on end. I had to calm this new-found friend.

And then the thought, to me, occurred - all of this is rather absurd. 
It's 3 a.m. and the devil's decided it's time that he, in me, confided.

I don't mind lending an ear to an acquaintance or a dear. 
But apart from a cosmic being of yore, I had never met this fellow before!

So, my privacy invaded; all of hell my bedroom pervaded, 
I had to soothe the devil's agitation - The world needs this whiny apparition.

"Let's analyse the situation", I said calmly and with conviction. 
"The world's folks have lost their souls and in their place are only holes".

"Yes yes!", the devil paced. His flames followed. My mind raced - 
which wasn't very easy for me: you see the time was five past three.

"Are you sure?", to ask I dared. In return, he only glared. 
"All right.", with resignation, I said, rather than with fear or dread.

I remembered my high-school physics - one law of thermodynamics. 
Energy can't be destroyed or created; the universe, whole, must be equated.

And so I decided to state this law to one who once, the Big Bang, saw. 
He slapped his hand to his head. "Oh bloody hell", he sighed & said.

"I can't explain how the cosmos works. Your ignorance really irks. 
The only thing I want to know is where the souls are. Where did they go?"

His single breath grew to flame as his demand, he did proclaim. 
"This world was made to hold them dear. How could they just disappear?"

And from his fiery eye did fall, a single tear that changed it all. 
He wiped it away beneath his hood and that is when I understood.

If the world had no soul it meant the devil, then, had no role. 
As it dawned on me, his flames died and the devil sat down by me and cried.