I wished that I could write a book
With this title deep and true
But I have only half an hour
So this will have to do ...
Contextual Amnesia
I notice that I soon forget
Previous situations
Especially those in which I met
With painful limitations
When I was a poor man
When I rode upon the bus
Drivers of cars and velocipedes
Made excessive fuss
The cursed bus was in their way
The cursed bus blocked out the day
Behind the cursed bus to wait?
Not blooming likely mate!
Now my means have grown
And a modest car I own
The freedom it affords to me
Is not complete, I am not free
For in the hours when traffic rushes
I'm stuck behind the stinking buses
Pedestrians? Equestrians?
Please don't make me laugh
They may go where e'er they will
As long as they're not in my path
Gentle reader please forgive
The foregoing hyperbole
Say not "my neighbor's just like that"
Ask rather "does the cap fit me?"
And so we pass to topics new
Wont you come explore with me
The plain impossibility
Of true empathy ...
The Impossibility of Empathy
Object if you will
To the gross insinuation
That empathy is not to be
Found in any situation
I contend, it's rarity
Is rarity to such degree
As to approach the apogee
Of true impossibility
Therefore I hope you will concede
In spite of ling'ring pedantry
That empathy is justly judged
Beyond the realms of normally
Accepted possibility
Can you remember how you felt
when you were barely two
And by parental edict
Wore ribbons on your shoe?
Can you remember how you felt
When you were nine or ten
And had to wash your face and hands
Then wash them all again?
Very few have the gift
Of recall with full clarity
Still fewer deign to take the pains
To apply their wit to charity
As long as such a state shall be
We shall see continually
The impossibility
Of true empathy
(There is a type of reader
Who likes to skip the fluff
Eshewing complication he
Skips down fast enough
To the chase, the punch, the core
And so we find him here
Awaiting our arrival
At the last frontier
At the pithy moment
At the phrase so lucid
Can't you hear him asking
"Why are folk so stupid"?)
Why Are People So Stupid?
I have a theory on this point ...
There comes a time bereft of hope
When empathetic souls can't cope
The fault is not with you or me
It's rather with mortality
For hidden deep within the soul
Lurks an ever-growing hole
A warning of the hole to come
In which all are one
"The grave awaits and I'll not give
One second of my life to live
To any other single one
For it all will soon be gone!"
Thus our logic un-refuted
Shows why people are so stupid
But ...
We who better know
Are happy to compassion show
For the plenitude of Father
Will last -we know - forever after
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