Terms Without End

It will come back

The idiotic hope of an idealistic masochist

That feeling that even if you have to burn out

Something useful will be seen by your guttering light

Do not be deceived

Once again, they will rarely read at all

And when they do, they will let the curtain of confusion fall

Devoid of any curiosity about what lies behind it

Bot prose will be your meat and drink

Talking with your students, without playing PowerPoint karaoke

Will be perceived as odd, unsafe, or creepy

You are supposed to tell them what to think

You are not supposed to show them how to think

No one really cares about this old nonsense anymore

If they do, they can find a map of its heart with a device

The device can be persuaded to summarize a summary

Why would anyone think about meaning

When the device can tell us what meaning is

With all the boring words sliced cleanly out

Perhaps because we ought not to permit

Our tools to figure out any of this shit

Or to pretend to, and then search and find

Things known and understood by humankind

Conveniently recorded so that we

Could tutor our own souls, most musically

Literature is not information

Literature is a laboratory

Perform an experiment

Given this world

Into which not a single soul asked to be hurled

What sort of life can one have, once it's unfurled?

Why not be a villain? What is a hero?

You must figure that out, taking notes as you go

When it is said that truth, beauty or goodness

Depends upon the person, or whatever

We imply that every answer is as useful as any other

That simply is not the case

Consider the world, and what you can make of it

Villains are treating the world like their thing

The better to multiply the suffering

Of those who don't trouble the villain at all

Mere extras, they can be replaced as they fall

Whatever his will is, venial, crude

He feels it must be made real; he's terribly rude

Had you paid attention to virtue and vice

To character, ethics, the naughty and nice

You would have tried on every available part

You'd cut out the vile jelly and feel it depart

Pine on the moors and know the moor's boredom

With brooding twits' squandering of freedom

What is good to each of them in turn?

Do even the villains know that they should burn?

In shady soliloquies, do they confess

In fraught stage whispers, full of distress

That treating subjects like objects is wickedness

You must not forget that each of them feel

What it is like to feel your dreams congeal

To talk endlessly with those who don't care

Who are afraid to live characters' lives, then compare

The better to see that, given the chance

We ought to see, at last, how each dances past

Different forms, some incredibly fast

But who they think they are? Knowing that lasts

You must join in it, becoming yourself

What will your character be? Dwarf or elf?

Each understands beauty, each can discuss it

With others, until, taking down from the shelf

The book that revealed what to make of the self

Some notes can be made, some amendments here

And there, perhaps some of this code's too severe

Before you know it, some things you revere

While others you cannot be anywhere near

You will have ideas, not just opinions

You will join, or bust, unions

Decide

Explain Why

Hero