How does one escape the greats?
The heros and heroines that fill our dreams.
Don't all originals originate in the past?
It's all a copy, a transfigured, unworthy sham.
Hacking away with paper and pen,
While Shakespeare and Socrates lie peacefully motionless in their graves.
It's over, no better minds can praise your work.
Literature died with its ideals,
So science rules over all,
In this hard, perpendicular world,
Colorless and reigned by numbers.
Because science improves
While art decays with commonalities and replicas.
Poets rant and novellists rage
But science is the clever one.
While romance dies,
Chemicals burn and bubble,
Earning well-liquored praise.
Perhaps literature only stumbles on
Within our noble attempts to resurrect it.
That the thankless slavery which we self-inflict,
Is in itself the most ironic tragedy of the ages.