Once again I am copping out with a poem, this time Dennis Lee’s “tale” from yesno:
Tell me, tall-
tell me a tale. The one about
starless & steerless & pinch-me, the
one about unnable now — which they did-did-
did in the plume of our pride, and
could not find the way home.
Little perps lost.
Yet a rescue appeared, in the
story a saviour arose. Called
limits. Called
duedate, called countdown ex-
tinction/collide. Called, eyeball to ego:
hubris agonistes.
Bad abba the endgame. In-
seminal doomdom alert:
pueblo naturans, or
else. But the breadcrumbs are gone, and the
story goes on, and how
haply an ending no
nextwise has shown us, nor known.
~~~~~
yesno is good all over. This is the last poem in the collection, and reflects the general tone of it: lots of wordplay and sound games, lots of invention, and the surface nonsense papers over some very big ideas.
Zoopolis 