A Letter to Phillip Adams

[Neville Briggs]

A LETTER TO PHILLIP ADAMS

They say we have no meaning,
no purpose and no reason.
We're just a cosmic accident
that plays out for a season.
A blink in countless eons;
one grain upon the shore
with all the other grains of sand
where rolls the sea of evermore.

Let's peer into the heavens,
let's measure all the stars.
Let's try and find a clue to life
under the dust on Mars.
Let's smash apart the atoms,
let's plumb the deepest sea.
Can molecules of dialectics
solve a pointless mystery?

I have a little job to do
to-day. I'll tell a mother
I'm sorry, but your child has died.
And there I will discover
what clever scientists
and wise philosophers
have yet to classify;
what it must mean when mothers cry.

[Stephen Whiteside]

What prompted this, Neville?

The way I see it, humans mean a lot to humans, but it doesn't mean they have to mean anything to anybody else.

[manfredvijars]

Starting humanity off with one bloke and one sheila who's a clone from that bloke's rib isn't even close to a decent genetic diversity model ...

[Neville Briggs]

Good question Stephen. I'd have to explain reading of over 10 authors and the living of over 60 years of life experience.

I dunno Manfred.

Marty. I read Phillip Adams' writings in the paper and I listen to his radio broadcast. A humanist who preaches materialism but cannot live it, as indeed no materialist can.

I'm not very pleased with this effort in verse writing. I doesn't come up to what I hoped to achieve. Rhyming is an obstacle to effective writing in English. English is very poor in rhyming words. I might have a go on the side at an unrhymed, blank verse version and see what it looks like. Of course it could just be my lack of poetic ability

[manfredvijars]

Rhyming is an obstacle to effective writing in English. English is very poor in rhyming words. I might have a go on the side at an unrhymed, blank verse version and see what it looks like. Of course it could just be my lack of poetic ability

You could always try German(Goethe) or Russian(Пушкин - Pushkin) lots of words there ...
(would make about as much sense to us as that unrhymed crap)

[Neville Briggs]

Marty, I heard the program on frogs. Interesting.


Manfred...that's the old " red herring " .

[Heather]

I like this one Neville. The first two stanzas flow really well - loses it's rhythm in the last I think.

Heather

[Neville Briggs]

Marty. I think Mr. Adams would certainly claim no. 2. I think he is a fellow traveller with Richard Dawkins.

No. 1 is difficult. He was a communist and is a strident socialist, but then again he is also a wealthy rural landowner and business man.

[Neville Briggs]

Thanks for the comment Heather. I did intend to try and slow the rhythm down in the last stanza, is that what you mean ?
I also wanted to make a bit of variety in the metre and rhyme just so it didn't go from beginning to end on the same " tune ". Do you think that didn't work ?

[Heather]

It slowed Neville but I found it a bit jerky whereas the first two stanzas have a lovely rhythm.