Two Poems

Entropy

… the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving:
to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy
and carve out refuges of beneficial order.
                   Stephen Pinker

– Well, here is one such, where we sit side by side
overlooking the ordered public garden, remaining,
such is your choice, on the outside

and discussing (any small talk I attempt ignored)
the ultimate brokenness of life
which you have now thought through: the golden rule

of non-aggression, the silver rule
of self-harshness, discipline, the nobility of despair.
Your lonely crag in an unredeemable world.

I’m with you so far. You conjure a Roman fightback
against disorder, though with Christian hearts, and then
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