ON THE SUPERFICIALITY OF ART How can poetry be anything besides deceit? How else can poets adapt to emptiness? When the masters discovered how meaningless the world is, naturally they were disappointed. So they responded with irony, satire, putting on airs, all kinds of tyranny. Some even went mad. Nowadays we usually just binge on topics urgent as our selves, our longings for justice and a stable home. Meanwhile the world keeps behaving according to its god: change? meaningless, inevitable, merciless change? obedient to that god’s twin commandments endless death, never-ending generation. Watching their children grow, every father every mother already knows this . . . this renewing emptiness. Beyond joy. Beyond sadness.