The human world is Vast and Strange,
And quite beyond a Ph.D.’s Small Range²
Science never Cheers up anyone: the Truth
About the human situation is just too Awful³
If you Dissect a bird to Diagram the Tongue,
You have to Cut the Chord Articulating Song⁴
Scientists are a clique of Haughty Idlers, Spoiled
Geniuses who Lack Feeling for life – an Arrogant
And fundamentally Parasitic Company of Dandies
& Climbers in Sterile Self-Indulgence of the mind⁵
Our Souls have been Corrupted in proportion to the
Advancement of our Sciences toward Perfection⁶
The majority of Intellectual people, Do Nothing,
And are not fit for Work of any kind: they have
Severe faces, talk of Weighty Matters – and yet
The vast Majority of humanity live as Savages⁷
A Book has no value in his eyes unless it is,
At the very least, Unreadable – Invented by
Scholars to Mystify the Unfortunate World⁸
The Wise of this world Shut and Lock us
Up in their Art and their Rationality so
We have to see through Their Eyes⁹
Humanity will be Punished with
The Profusion of New Jargons¹⁰
¹ Alexander Pope, Epistle II
² Langston Hughes, Ph.D.
³ Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
⁴ Sylvia Plath, Trio of Love Songs
⁵ Hermann Hesse tr. Richard & Clara Winston, Magister Ludi
⁶ Jean-Jacques Rousseau tr. unknown, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
⁷ Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, The Cherry Orchard
⁸ Jules Verne tr. Robert Baldick, Journey to the Center of the Earth
⁹ Jacob Boehme, quoted by Robert Bly in The Light Around the Body
¹⁰ Rae Armantrout, New Intelligence