We live in an expanding universe.
The red shift of distant lights
Means nothing to the common man;
Unless, perhaps, it conjures images
Of the traffic light: far ahead,
That changes red just as the car in line before him
In the rush-hour jam at last begins to move forward.
To such a traveler, the red shift phenomenon
Expands his commute to infinitesimal agony.
In our time when even Chaos is worshiped at Science' Temple
Why is the pain of so much waiting so blandly denied a cure?
Witness the twentieth century anomaly -
The evolution of the home race:
Starting with factory workers Shifting together,
Walking, riding carriages - communing;
The next phase, with rail & bus commuting,
Yields mutual exchange of Crossword Clues
And Free-Radical irony; segueing
Into the third stage: Isolation Chambers
With friends & neighbors sitting
Mere feet from the Other, each waiting ...
Waiting for that red shift of the distant light,
Not even acknowledging each other,
Because such contact is so unsatisfying:
The empty hand wave, the silent 'Hello,'
Then creeping in slow motion leap frog as
Explorers and Blazers plod past
Galaxies and Saturns - light years apart;
Their event horizons demarcated by invisible,
Hermetically sealed Windows, ironic exchanges
Now conditioned through Freon processes,
While we Hyde our Work Face and shift to the red
For our night-life freedoms:
I am not the person I was before (5:00);
The word is irony, now teach me meaning.
