The Blind Men and the Elephant

[med_cat]

The Blind Men and the Elephant

by John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Hindustan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might satisfy the mind.

The First approached the Elephant
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side
At once began to bawl:
“Bless me, it seems the Elephant
Is very like a wall.”

The Second, feeling of his tusk,
Cried, “Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear.”

( The Third approached the animal... )

On The Nature Of Desire - David Lehman

[bennybunny.livejournal.com]

1
There are, said my old philosophy professor, two kinds
Of people in the world: those who divide everything in two
And those who don't. At the dinner party. Janice was talking

About computers. IBMs are masculine, she said. Macintoshes
Are feminine. Thats exactly what some people say
About art and nature, said her husband, ben. Do you really

Believe that, asked Mark. I mean, should hurricanes be named
After women, as in the old days, and is the construction of a city
The quintessential male act, Nature subdued by Apollo's merry men?


2
Nature, then, is the great eruption--flood, earthquake,
Tidal wave, volcano--that interrupts the world series
And sends men running to their cars and their private visions

Of sublime waterfalls in the early nineteenth century when
Man could feel alone in a benevolent universe whose god
Was not an almighty moralist but the outburst of an imagination

Capable of anything. Nature is the calamity that-overwhelms man
With terror yet draws him into it, and he creeps to the edge
Of the canyon, holding the hand of the woman he loves.


3
The laws governing isosceles triangles do not apply
To man, wife, and child. The professor of mathematics is one
Of two men in love with the same woman. The other is his son

By a previous mistress. Both are fearless.
They know that nature is a woman, a forest on fire
That can't stop burning. The goal is not to quench the fire

( But to let it burn  )