Mass and Gravity

Encyclopedia

The desiccated calfskin spineof Britannica, Volume 9(1911), flakes when cracked,and routinely sheds a compact

pile of feathery dust that spreadslike apple butter on the threadsof my corduroys if I tryto brush it off. Its pages lie

open at Einsiedeln, a townin Switzerland of some renownfor its abbey, and Eisenach,German birthplace of J. S. Bach.

Between the two should be Einstein;instead there’s only a blank line—no General Relativityconnecting mass and gravity;

the set’s old voice is likewise muteabout the Great War, the saluteof Jesse Owens in Berlin,Little Boy, bin Laden;

the Holocaust is unforeseen,and so are Elvis and James Dean:the universe it would addressoutdated when it left the press.

For now Wikipedia reignsamong postsecondary brainswhere Britannica ruled before,and with 4 million entries more

than its antique print predecessor.It’s scorned by many a professordespite its monumental sweepas a mile wide but an inch deep:

fanatics’ obscure hobbyhorsesderived from unconvincing sources;all of Shakespeare as written byinfnite monkeys, on the fy.

As such it manifests the age’simpatience with bewhiskered sagespontifcating from a chair—a world that simply doesn’t care

for parallels and precedentsand even mistrusts common sense.Old books and men are obsolete—tendentious, dense, and incomplete—

while knowledge is a pool of datathat neutral algorithms create astrict quantitative study ofto prove the vagaries of love.

We are alike, that book and I,both stiff, unread, and somewhat dry.May I endure a kindred fate,my gist become incorporate

in public-domain datasetsreferred to though the world forgets(when processed through a microchip)the source’s name and authorship.

Then, in a hundred years or so,a future that I’ll never knowwill fnd the rest of me, I trust,shelved in a case, gathering dust.

The Through-Hiker

This new June riot of green limb and leafdismays the graying man who wanders throughthese hills in which he would outwalk his grief.

It seems but such a short walk from that briefspring season that he left unthinking tothis new June riot of green limb and leaf.

About him younger men push past, their chiefobsession speed. They will not pause to viewthese hills in which he would outwalk his grief.

He’d tell of lovers lost, betrayed belief,but, no, he can’t keep pace, say how he knewhis own June riot of green limb and leaf.

Only fall’s carnage promises relief—as he tends north he knows it visits toothese hills in which he would outwalk his grief.

The trick is seeing that it’s not the thief,that from the dying back will bud anewa new June riot of green limb and leafin hills through which he might outwalk his grief.