Poems
Calmly, the papers calculate the chance
That in ten years the planet and a shard Of rock will consummate the long romance We’ve led with ruin. This will be ignored: Not for the long but lotto-beating odds, But from the madman’s counterfactual ease That fissions us as always into gods Who count in aeons and eternities, And beasts who scavenge for the daily kill, Gobbling down the meat that will not keep. Does the beast suspect that nuclear winter will Be secretly welcome as untroubled sleep, And does the god observe the sky in peace Since his life neither starts nor ends in weather? Both let what will come come; for the decrees Of the asteroid are righteous altogether. ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 24 November 2005, on page 26 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/kirsch-1-05-1381
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