2087. JOHNNY'S SO LONG AT THE FAIR

JOHNNY'S SO LONG
AT THE FAIR
(Tycho Brahe)
Bring in the capstans and all the happenstance of
random occurrence; the universe is spinning madly
as we fall. We are suspended - seemingly - in a
space of no space, in a liquid all our own, hanging
tenuously in a dark-matter space (listen to me) of
our own dire imagining. All your Science now, Tycho
Brahe has gone to naught. The wonder is that
we are yet here.
-
I look at the shapes of things and I see a jar. The shape
of matter varies, but my certainties abound. They each
keep their shape, and remain the same. So then, I have
no doubts, I am not a doubting man. Should you but
need to imagine, know that I was fixed by nose-in-place
Johnson - some quack from the broad Venus plains.
I suggest nothing and nothing is thereby suggested
back. So I need not even listen : except to the Spring
and the air and the sunlight and all the mottled lands
and waters of this world. Nature is my cuff link, worn
boldly in my broadly-patterned shirt.
-
I want to find the world right where it is.
I want to find a Nature - as well - in place.
My lead pencils and exercise books, (remember
them?), are kept yet under lock and key in the
library closet, beneath the stairway at the third-floor
landing. Hardly anyone goes and no one sees.
Only a rich man, carrying candle and light in the
deepest of night, would even know this all existed.
-
I am kept like silk in a madman's harem.
I am Johnny, so long at the fair.