A poem for this moment
Yes, Auden’s “September 1, 1939.” Yes, Yeats’s “The Second Coming.” Sure, even Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.” But this one by e e cummings is right up there.
pity this busy monster, manunkind
pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go E. E. Cummings
Polly said,
January 14, 2020 at 12:25 pm
Well yes, progress is a disease. We can’t help thinking we got it all figured out, we are brainwashed into that. But we have nothing figured out, except how to self-destruct.
And everyone wants to blame someone else.