There is no environment more favorable
to meditation on the grand design.
From here one can survey the whole of the table
and see how it plots itself out from line to line –
a platform on which measure reigns supreme,
owing nothing to the extravagance of dream.
On it things are counted, weighed, classified and stowed.
Nothing is admitted that can’t be gauged,
circumscribed, streamlined, normalized, numbered and paged –
at once diversity’s scourge and certainty’s goad,
posting scarecrows with guns at every node,
squirreling out every rat, each rabbit, each mole,
establishing the gross perfection of the whole.
Mind, maker, master – the man at the helm.
The ambition – indeed, the charter of the realm.
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