Derek

“We today can still talk of a return to nature, because we are relics of it, only slightly modified in biological respect within civilization, but try imagining the slogan ‘return to nature’ uttered by a robot. Why, it would mean turning into deposits of iron ore!”
― Stanisław Lem, Microworlds: Writings on Science Fiction and Fantasy

“From Archaeology
one moral, at least, may be drawn,
to wit, that all

our school text-books lie.
What they call History
is nothing to vaunt of,'

being made, as it is,
by the criminal in us:
goodness is timeless.”
― W.H. Auden, Selected Poems

“for the subject of the verb
to-hunger is never a name :
dear Adam and Eve had different bottoms,
but the neotene who marches
upright and can subtract reveals a belly
like the serpent's with the same
vulnerable look. Jew, Gentile or pigmy,
he must get his calories
before he can consider her profile or
his own, attack you or play chess,
and take what there is however hard to get down :
then surely those in whose creed
God is edible may call a fine
omelette a Christian deed.”
― W.H. Auden, Selected Poems

“Is it possible that, not content with inveigling Caliban into Ariel's kingdom, you have also let loose Ariel in Caliban's? We note with alarm that when the other members of the final tableau were dismissed. He was not returned to His arboreal confinement as He should have been. Where is He now? For if the intrusion of the real has disconcerted and incommoded the poetic. that is a mere bagatelle compared to the damage which the poetic would inflict if it ever succeeded in intruding upon the real. We want no Ariel here, breaking down our picket fences in the name of fraternity, seducing our wives in the name of romance. and robbing us of our sacred pecuniary deposits in the name of justice. Where is Ariel? What have you done with Him? For we won't, we daren't leave until you give us a satisfactory
answer.”
― W.H. Auden, Selected Poems