A How How How How
We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth,
but Confucius say you can’t step into the same river twice.
While Guy Montag and Joe Everyman chase the elusive George Washington across
an increasingly cartoon landscape,
the Eleysian fields are plowed under, paved, and parked upon.
Faded beauty, hazy skies, a valley full of grains
of dust to find us, to rule us all, and in the darkness bind us.
Truth, beauty, beauty, truth, what use such knowledge when
there is no truth to be seen, no beauty to be found? Dead men
lie in their graves, their lies echoing up from the ground, and we
are swept to action by the kinetic inertia of our past.
A How How How How
The brakes of the future have failed, and the future is both brake and benzene.
Our mad frenetic pace requires of us every heavy fuel, and while our few helmsmen try
to steer for a gap in the rocks
(they are always trying to steer for a gap in the rocks)
we urge the engine faster, make it fast and make it faster,
make unmerciful disaster cry hold, enough and call us master
and when, at last, our dance was done we glowed, as though we’d actually won,
and we looked, as one, to the helm,
and we turned, as one, to the helmsman,
then we whopped ’im, ’cause ’e couldn’t save us all.
A How How How How
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