Futurology Sometime Poem by Ananta Madhavan

We see the world as we want to see it.
Sometimes it is ravishingly beautiful,
Like a sunlit morning sieving through the mist
By slow degrees, until the shadows show
Shades we never noticed and the clouds
Change shape, taking on hues we cannot name.

We need not side with the doomsday monger
Or the dreamer who cannot re-enter Somnia.
I like Utopia, but heed the slide to Dystopia;
But not as a visionary with a blueprint,
Nor as number-crunching model-builder,
Nor as a progressive biologist'.
Neither pessimist nor optimist.
I shall not be a regressive historian,
Who longs to chronicle a future era
Beyond the annals of a Roman past,
The foretold myths of ancient Greece
And Vedic chants of self-negation.

We see the world we want to see.
We need the words to recall and re-enact
Our subtly shifting, melding moods.
Words are the consensual sea we live in.
But words are both leading and misleading.
It all depends upon the reading.