Pity this busy monster

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

Oh the joy of truth. Oh the wisdom of parallelism. This poem has been a dear friend since the first day I read it back in my days at UC Berkeley. I came to recognize those many years ago that man"kind"
is not always so, and though the reference in "kind" may also mean "type", this does not blunt the truth of this poem. There is so much to mine here, and so many gems to discover.

I'll limit myself to commenting on two parts:
1. Progress being a diseases of comfort. How true this is, and how remarkable a statement. This is a testament to his genius with slicing up language to find a true expression. If ther is anything we must be aware of with progress, it is the fulfillment of a fundamental human desir for comfort. This fulfillment results in our pervasive diseases of body and mind that plague us today. We are our own worst enemies in this regard.

2. The presence of a great universe, next door. How many people have used how many words to expres the recognition of alternate lifestyles, philosophies and paradigms? How many work as well as this simple phrase I discovered long ago that there are indeed beautiful universes "next door" that do not involve drugs. The truth of this is far reaching, and one way it resonates is with Thoreau talking about our minds having deep rut and the importance of recognizing and then jumping out of them. Cummings sums it up so well here, that we should all just ste aside from the poverty of the dominant paradigm, and join a group of the willing in the universe next door. Genius.