"(Shuffling Towards) Art's Holy Shrine"

"To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practical solution. It conflicted with the tendency toward mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals."

--George Orwell (from 1984)

Thomas Hardy & "A Suicide Poem"

"He had reached the stage in a young man's life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in England, we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be."

--Thomas Hardy (from The Return of the Native)

"A Suicide Poem"

alone
in the dark
with a belt
hanging out