The Return of Tamtam

Ladies and gentlemen,

After a nearly three-year hiatus, filled with much change, growth, and challenge, I have returned to the world of blogging at long last.

To commemorate my return, I will post this poem that a friend of mine sent to me a few years ago. I believe it's called The Logical Conclusion, but I've also seen it listed as The Ass Shall Sigh Uninstructed.

When earth's last thesis is copied 

From the theses that went before, 

When idea from fact has departed 

And bare-boned factlets shall bore,

When all joy shall have fled from study 

And scholarship reign supreme; 

When truth shall "baaa" on the hill crests 

And no one shall dare to dream; 

When all the good poems have been buried 

With comment annoted in full 

And art shall bow down in homage 

To scholarship's zinc-plated bull, 

When there shall be nothing to research 

But the notes of annoted notes, 

And Baalam's ass shall inquire 

The price of imported oats; 

Then no one shall tell him the answer 

For each shall know the one fact 

That lies in the special ass-ignment 

From which he is making his tract. 

So the ass shall sigh uninstructed 

While each in his separate book 

Shall grind for the love of grinding 

And only the devil shall look. 

Against the "germanic" system of graduate study and insane specialization in the Inanities. 

-Ezra Pound