Each of us learned in his own way
that his imagination had been dwarfed,
looked up and saw the power of which he had
been proud loom over us,
civilization face to face with its own implications:

industrial ruin
gagged outrage
imagination incarceration
magnetically resonant war machines

force-fed televised anesthesia
holy ozone bombardment
morally vaccinated remote-control consciousness

stress-related Buddhism
post-industrial prayer

muzzled prophets unbound
breaking out of artifice

survival of a joyful noise
particulate angelic net of breathing ones

web of fragile matter
defiant soaring souls
a thousand dancers on the head of a pin

and civilization asks of both spirit and ruin:
Is you is or is you ain't my baby?


(beginning and end from Jacob Bronwoski)