Rowan Williams: "King Lear"

It does not keep you safe; it does not

give you the words you need, it does not

tell you how much to pay, how much

they owe you. It will not work, like egg-yolks,

to cool the numb heat of lost eyes and treacheries.

It does not surrender to the reasonable

case for not risking everything to keep

secrets and rivals, the white line in the tickling

membrane of freedom. It will not keep you dry: rain,

like crying, sinks down to the bone.

It will not stop: not when you sleep, not

when you wake, not when you want it to,

not when you want to settle with the mirror

of your shame. Never. It will not. Never.

Rowan Williams 
The Guardian, Saturday August 2 2008 

Brooks Haxton, "Prospectus: In Lieu of the Mall Expansion"

To the Syracuse mayor, the County Executive, and Members of Common Council.

I propose a shrimp ramp,
so that the shrimp can fly
from my yard over the lilacs
into the tamarack next door,
the way infected crows
and chickadees do now.
Your scheme to make our mall
the biggest mall on earth
is boring. We could build
a shrimp ramp cheap. It’s true,
there may not be an ocean here
where shrimp could live,
but river shrimpers
in my hometown sold
fine shrimp, though they
were toxic, and pollution
killed them. It was sad,
but let’s not maunder.
No ramp on our scale needs
measly river shrimp.
Forget them! Let’s import
Malaysian prawns:
they’re bigger. What we need
is vision! Once the shrimp ramp
rears, magnificent!
against the darkness
of the civic mind, details,
like feasibility, will sort themselves.

(h/t more than 95 theses)