An Ode To Pascal Bruckner Poem by Sidi Mahtrow

Pascal Bruckner is a philosopher
In all the meanings of the title,
Who by word, thought and deed
Attempts to alert mankind to its task
Of standing and walking erect.

For while the easy way
Is to just pass the day
In idle thought and action
Man has a higher mission
To see that he is being led
By others who have been fed
Ideas, or theories, yet
That they propound as fact.

Bruckner sees the glass of which we speak
As neither half full, nor empty, but, perhaps with a crack?
Created by man, a fusion of silicon
That can be raised to the lips to atone
For evils, yes evils, proposed by others
Who lay a knife to the whetting stone.
The elixir to be drunk
Said to be contaminated (pure bunk!)

Overwrought working with words and visual images
The Judas' amongst us proclaim the end is nigh
Promising that for sure we all will die
Marching mankind into another Battle of the Roses
Where the leaders proclaim,
'There is no retreat
To do so would be to die in shame.'

And so, as Bruckner writes;
With all the false information
Man soon becomes immune
To the doctrine of hate, environment disaster
And such other palaver
That spews forth.
And taking the glass to his lips
Is soon refreshed.

****
The Ideology of Catastrophe, an essay by Pascal Bruckner that in translation by Alexis Cornel, was published in the Wall Street Journal, April 10,2012.

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