410 and 411

But tho the words still come to me, they come

the same way every time—they will not drift,

nor catch yon proverb brainwave, nor become

their better versions. Nay, ‘tis not their gift

to form much better sentences than this,

despite the fervent way they are rehearsed.

A man may know but one craft, and so miss

the arts beyond the tool he took up first.

This tool is mine: the haphazard and ryth-

-mic hammering of vowel and consonant,

such that the kind of chainmail that I’m smith-

-ing is at once both chord and dissonant.

But always is the couplet pleasant, quite.

(If I can pause to render it quite right).

~~~

S6E12: Ship in a Bottle

In the referenced episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, professor James Moriarty, nemesis of the great Sherlock Holmes, finds himself sentient of and physically within the same intrepid future which the Enterprise calls home.

It struck me as I watched the professor’s reaction to this (the actor was quite convincing) that I would be wordlessly thrilled to experience such a time-jump. I could simply wring the computer’s ear clean off. I could see what had become of my favorite “modern” philosophers and their ideas. How outdated were my own beliefs? Which books would even discuss the tenets that my ancient age clung to? What (clearly I should have started here) had become of science? How ancient was the internal combustion engine, and what was the machination that replaced it?

Indeed, if I was professor Moriarty, I would stop at nothing to become student to every professor I could possibly meet. A dramatic opportunity to be sure.

But then again—

—do I not have the ear of my own Wikipedia to wring?

~

If sea turned into space while setting sail,

and, looking back, you saw no port nor bay,

but galaxies and stars behind your tail,

for times far past your own had passed away;

and if you knew that all that you’d once wondered,

was known by those who’d asked it long before,

and that your ponderous snags had all been sundered,

which ones would you first study and explore?

Which library would soon become your lounge?

Which online queries would you thus indulge?

I say, I’d drop all things to madly scrounge

each scrap of text for what it might divulge.

But why, I say, do I not do so now?

Is my own era’s knowledge worse somehow?