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 made
is not a world 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
Was e.e. cummings responding to the new invention called Television or was he just thinking about news, journalism and advertising in general and the way it ineptly filled in the empty spaces about 'the aims' of the tremendous sacrifices of men and materials during world war two- what Americans were to expect FOR THEMSELVES out of the massive slaughter in the stupid 'island-hopping' strategy in the Pacific, fire-bombings of German and Japanese cities and ultimately the dropping of the atom bombs. Certainly the Nazis and Japanese had to be dealt with but why not patiently, in a minimalist sort of way instead in an orgy of senseless destruction which matched their opponents in ferocious inhumanity and lack of respect for what God created? It all began in world war one, of course, the futile stand-up assaults against entrenched machine guns, gas attacks, repeated over and over again to absolutely no effect but then replayed again and again and so forth right into the present age, in each subsequent rendition the victims becoming more and more helpless to defend themselves- the "unselfs" of the poem.
ReplyDeleteThis, in the name of 'progress', "civilization"? Give me a break, what could be more transparent?
Whether other people comment on my blog or not is actually a matter of complete indifference to me. I have no compulsion to either explain myself, change anybody's mind, pose as 'authority" or become famous. If I am going to be harassed with insults and obscenities, then, clearly, shutting down outside comments is the solution. No problem!
Oh dear, I hate to brake it to u, but currently u r extremely famous in israel. At this point u can even call your blog John’s battle field due to me. If you r indifferent to comment then why even bother to delete them. Not to mention, that if this was the case then you wouldn’t be expressing yourself on the WWW, you would keep everything to yourself. Pleas tell my Sexy Khomeini that I am not hitting on u, otherwise he will give me hell.
ReplyDelete