Thucydides:
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
“Because of the Human Thing”
We forecast both the worst and best because
The human thing is settled in the crux.
Set there like sapphires made to master laws,
This thing assures the rigid rule of flux
Or many faceted uncertainty.
This gemstone is the single perfect shape.
It offers only one uncertainty—
That fixed capriciousness, the living rape
Of would be diamond-pure deep control.
Just as the solitary fact is change,
Its fractals cannot take the arctic pole
Star as their source. White certitude is strange.
Fate assigned Alcibiades his place,
Uncertainty, disloyalty, disgrace.