Tapped Or Trapped Or Rapped? Poem by Jonathan ROBIN

The world, when wide, demanded empires vast.
Economies of scale appeared to be
uneven, and applied imperfectly,
as sound and fury buttressed ruling caste.
But times have changed, fresh horoscopes are cast,
Pluto downsized, Galileo, Copernicus, Vinci,
excommunicating Ptolemy.
This does not mean we’ve banished to the past
self-centered viewpoints, understood at last
small rhymes with beauty, ending poverty.
Newton, then Einstein, new technology
engendered, superstitions overcast.
One constant challenge cannot be bye-passed, -
Man’s nature alters slowly, ‘progress’ fast.

Man’s nature alters slowly, but Mankind
is t[r]apped within a spiral none control.
Few men pretend to understand the role
they’re meant to play, and ‘constantly’ we find
old infrastructures fissure. Though the mind
grows outwards while the race would race to bowl
all trace of old established tenets. Soul –
if soul there be – seems out at ‘see’, purblind
become, while standards must be redefined
against a background where, from pole to pole,
the sole remaining constant – change – no goal
dares guarantee, with ‘Change’ ‘Chance’ intertwined.
Interdisciplinary walls fall fast,
Past’s foundation bulwarks overcast.


12 December 1991 revised 12 October 2006