O Devayani, you wake
all but nauseated
in the morning.
The probe landed on
Mars
on Independence Day.
You think about us
on this spinning globe
of rock
with wild trees
and turgid rivers,
flowers,
birds, the remnants
of
dinosaurs,
and wonder.
O Devayani,
how you
wonder
about the paved-over earth,
the gas stations,
the
cars,
sitting at the computer.
Your stomach begins to churn,
contract,
heave.
How can you relate
the austere
terrain
of Mars
to the silly world of Disney,
the pompous
world
of the nation-state,
the wishful pronouncements
of
science and its twin?
Last year there was life
after death,
this year iron
"rusts" in the systems of
women.
O Devayani,
the world's entertainement
-- called
knowledge --
makes you gag,
makes you ponder
the triviality
of
human
life
measured against space,
time,
the mega-millions of eons
against the
finger-snap
of the second
that we've been here.
Just long
enough
to think
we know something,
before our
earth
shakes off this irritation
we've become
to try something
new.
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu