It’s an exhibition not a competition
As David Letterman used to say of stupid human tricks
Please no wagering
Except that it kind of is a competition
Or so we have considered it
In the milder the progressive version
The younger generation duels the elder
To at worst a draw but most often to victory
Because we stand upon the shoulders of giants
And hopefully add some height of our own
Hence the romantic heroes of Macaulay and Carlyle
But in the gloomier variety
The titans would rather devour their young
Than papa-like hoist them to view the parade
Or so we fear in our infantile vulnerability
This was the view of Dr Freud and Prof Bloom
So that history becomes a Marvel mash-up of Cronus and Oedipus
Now the Marxist survey represents a synthesis
A titanic struggle progressing to a blissful denouement

And which scheme is true unless as in so much else
The truth is an impenetrable muddle
And how do you find room in truth
For both horror and beatific vision
And what is the relation of Truth and Poetry
Of what is and what’s said to be
Queried Goethe the confident sage
And answered affirmatively by so naming his life
That they ultimately converge as one
So too his doomed contemporary young Keats
Ventriloquized through a piece of crockery
That not only were Truth and Beauty one and the same
But that we on earth needed this equation and nothing more
But when their boisterous and criminal siècle had reached its fin
Salome kissed decapitated John
And the way was laid for Sysiphus and Meursault
Offspring of Raskolnikov
The pathway to the verge of nihilism or past the verge

The twentieth century balanced at its midpoint
Upon holocausts nuclear and racist-industrial
And the twenty-first began with fanatical murder
Performed for reality TV
And image is truth truth image
And if earth is just a flat slip of video
Who gives a rat’s ass
About flood hurricane drought extinction fire famine and war
So yeah I lean toward the progressives
Get some Dickinson and Morrison in there
By which by no means do I intend to say
That progress is inevitable or even historically factual at this juncture
But that understanding begins with fact
And we can remember such facts as have been hitherto discovered
And can thus draw general conclusions from specific instances

And poetry is truth and beauty is poetry
For the one great poem subsumes
The eyes of Oedipus and the nightingale’s song
The Three Stooges and Sophie’s choice
And the ghostly beloved apparition
The drunken ecstasy of honky-tonks and maenad rave
Pop songs that sweep the globe as fresh and ephemeral as bread
And sure the Know-Nothings will burn it and crush it
And it will reignite just inches out of reach
We die but we speak our deaths
We joy and we sing our joy
And the world finds its redemption
In the language of generality
In tragedy comedy and romance