Deep South v.1 n.1 (February, 1995)
Master, none of them love you. You are not the one they want to hear. One Galileo, they say, Made a Pope feel small, But in the process these professors all the bigger: So they love him, and they love far worse and smaller human minds: Their death-defying Christ of whom You know; one Marx, a strange mind, Clouds, steam fantasies; one Freud, all Pedantry and titillation, (for he makes Their very loins ooze cleverness); And other, even lesser priests, Ephemerae, whose names Are the mosquito's whine, a pitch too high and small for me To offer to my Master's Mountain ear. Only you they will not love. Tried with your name, they turn Unhappily away and add this word: "Social". So they name you: "Social Darwin". "Social" means, in their tounge, Sex and tribal standing. Thus they mean to say , I think, Your name disturbs their reproductive Urge--a strange effect, no doubt, To all who have not see, as I, Up close, in your service, uncomplainingly, the vile yet comic Pride with which these filthy hominids (Your pardon, Master) still enshroud Themselves. As you ordered. I floated over Burgess Shale this solar year; The hominids (Your pardon, Humbly, once again) are busy But still as slow and dim as Megatheria (A species which I yet prefer to that which has devoured it); I would estimate their blundering upon (Your pardon, let me say "discovering") Chimera 174 three solar years From date of scroll. That it may please you, Who so loved these apes (your pardon yet again, Dear master)--that it may Amuse you, and atone for these Impertinences, may I mention that I saw, While overfloating Burgess Shale, Two diggers, both of Sage rank, I believe, leave Find 106 --Five hundred million years Of our ceasless care for them-- Exposed, to flake away in wind And sun, so they might sneak off To couple furtively in brush, Swatting deerflies as they moaned in rhythm On a plastic blanket marked with butterflies. Indeed, a charming species-- But my Master knoweth best. So with this scroll, Master, I send you, as you asked, Birth records for the city Of Irkutsk in 1936; Five freezedried puppies from the dog I marked near Titicaca; and In the tube attached, one Sage ape who called you "social"-- Set in this scroll to sleep, Sealed, on Archival recall, Till you may choose to wake And question it.
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