Progress of the Body
From W. H. Auden, we have this charming short:
Why are the public buildings so high? How come you don’t know?
Why, that’s because the spirits of the public are so low.1In W. H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1966, p. 191.
To extrapolate on that theme of matter and form in society, body and soul writ large, I shall dare to venture a few lines of my own.
All our technological means of flying
Show a lack the more revealed in denying,
For as technē conquers what noēsis cannot,
We kill off the search for the wings we had sought.
Boarding the airbus in a long, sheepish line,
To drowse in discomfort, or awkwardly dine,
Carried through Nows without a twinge of remorse
For lost ancient dreams of taming the wild horse.
