Friday, July 2, 2010

And washed our hands of it



Mistakes were made,
unknowing;
choices settled themselves by committees
who picked up the choices that fell to hand,
unthinking,
carrying out the important business,
undoing
the work that should have been done,
that could have been done
that became quite undone in advance,
unquestioning
due to the importance of the task
set before us, so we thought
unpleasant
consequences were bound to arise but
they were merely byproducts of
unravelling
the dumb dead albatross these stupid
circumstances wreathed around our necks
and so we dropped the chemical
unfortunately
to the tune of many, many, many barrels,
to undermine the flow of our
indiscretion,
Unsatisfactorally,
of course, some are never pleased,
the turtle-lovers, the sand scrapers,
the people who weep at any pelican
or baby dolphin
or whale, smothered.

Unbelievable, these people,
unable
to accept that the deed is done
and there's no use crying over spilled crude.
Unfathomable,
really, that they'd expect more than what we're doing--
but what will come?
Unknowable--
aren't we only men?

(Unless you mean--aren't we gods?
With dirty hands and dirty feet--
yet we can wash the dirt away.
And still not know the future.)

Unnatural as it may be,
we're deeply apologetic,
and we won't be doing anything like this again
on any of our other rigs,
extant
or
unbuilt.

Probably.

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