Pat Clinton: ‘The Class of ’65’ and ‘Reductio Ad Absurdum’

The Class of ’65

I never dared be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old.
                            —R. Frost

In the end we lived lives not unlike our parents
Brought children into a world we held at arms-length.
Drifted from job to job avoiding the sedentary,
Or climbed the career ladder, rickety with uncertainty.

Hung portraits of our parents above the hearth
And wondered what would happen to our side of earth.
Extolled the virtues of hard work
And thrift and for what it was worth

Disdained anything not commensurate with
The radical ideals of our youth.
In short we became as conservative as any previous generation
Though somewhat more politicized as a result of education.

Pat Clinton

Reductio Ad Absurdum

shrinking your purview
to a tight vision of your inching shoes.
—Richard Wilbur

God didn’t make man in his own image,
Man reduced the ineffable to a human scale and size,
To make it comprehensible in a puerile age,
And to anthropomorphize.

And the scientist today does the same
With that incomprehensible immensity;
“Shrinking the Universe to the size of a pea.”
So that reason can grasp it again.

Pat Clinton