poetry

It must be nice to be able to write poetry. Especially the short kind that rhymes. My friend David is a brilliant poet, and also the humorless fellow in my "Straw Men & Ham Sandwiches" essay. But his stuff doesn't rhyme, which makes it sound more serious and also makes it harder (for me) to memorize.

Ken MacLeod, author of the incredible science fiction anarchy, Stone Canal, wrote this poem a couple years ago and posted it on his blog today:

An empty threat can empty skies:
no contrail-crayon crosses
that pale blue dome. But come on, guys!
We can do better. Losses

are not made less but multiplied
and fear's increased by flinches.
We but dishonour those who died
in dying ourselves by inches.

So damn them all, and may they fall:
church, mosque and synagogue!
And send to hell that pair as well:
despot and demagogue!

When in the daylight laws are made
in halls that all may enter,
there's light at night, a world of trade,
a world where Man's the centre.

There is no God, and we must get
our comfort where we find it:
in the rising yell of a laden jet
and a bright contrail behind it.