Quantum physics shows that time
And space do not exist
The real and the illusion are the same
But somehow little numbers
Shake their heads and do insist
That they are real and still can play the game
Max Planck discovered Quantum
And the world forever changed
What once seemed true became just ancient lore
The subatomic world revealed
That all was rearranged
Except that two plus two still equaled four

I spoke to Reality the other day, and he said, “I am, like you, an intelligent being, with a body to house myself, a brain to think, pellucid lenses to see, and appendages to push my body through the murk.” I agreed that pushing our bodies through the murk was the most we could hope for.

We push our bodies through the murk
Believing we are first in line
That we alone make all things work
And disregarding every sign
That universes come and go
Pellucid lenses dim with age
Synapses gradually slow
And every book has a last page
It matters not what lawyers write
Or mountain heights the techies stride
We’re born at dawn and leave at night
Along for life, a wondrous ride

I do not believe for a single moment that Angela Merkel and the EU made a risk/benefit assessment before allowing millions of military age Muslim men into their countries, given the prior violent history of Muslims invited into Europe, going back to early days when Indonesia gained independence as a result of civil war and the Dutch were expelled. On that occasion the Dutch offered asylum in the Netherlands to Indonesian Muslims who had worked for the Dutch and who feared retribution. Many Indonesian Muslims accepted the Dutch hospitality and when they were safely in Holland they demanded their rights as Muslims, holding an entire trainload of passengers as hostages until their demands were met. And we all remember Theo van Gogh being stabbed by a Muslim, who left him dead on the street with a knife and a note stuck to his chest. There was too much Muslim violence before the great wave of Muslim migration for anyone not to be aware of the grave danger unlimited Muslim immigration posed to the native peoples of Europe, yet the leftist political elites threw open the borders anyway. No, there was no risk assessment involved. I may be wrong, but I will risk a verse.

The Muslim be a cunning beast
Raised in the mur’drous Middle East
They have no sense of human rights
Since only they, by their own lights
Are human and the rest obscene
Unworthy to be even seen
With true believers of the Book
That says all others God forsook
And mandates infidels be slain
With no need even to explain
Barbarians are at the gate
They must be fought, it’s not too late
For Europe’s men from Thrace to Gaul
To stand and listen to the call
To die, with Horatius, ‘gainst all odds
For the ashes of your fathers and the temples of your gods

I have reached the age where I am often surrounded in memory with grandparents, parents, younger sisters and aunts, uncles and cousins without number. I even attempt on occasion to return to that time by taking the number 9 bus.

The bus rocked gently on the uneven blacktop, stopping every few blocks to let off or take on passengers. But that was all right. I didn’t mind the delays. I was going home, on the number 9 bus I took every night for all those years. I got off and walked the two blocks to my house. I stepped through the door into the living room and was instantly aware of a deep and intense silence, the only sound a fly somewhere at a window trying desperately to get out. I stood in the middle of the room, looking at but not seeing the furniture or the closed drapes. The kitchen chairs were perfectly arranged around the table, but I knew somehow that no one had sat at that table in a very long time. Filled with a foreboding sense of dread, I climbed the stair to the second floor, but that was empty as well, though all the beds were made and the bathroom had clean towels on the racks. There was no one home, and I knew, with utter finality, that everyone had gone, and I was the last. I closed the front door behind me and walked to the bus stop to wait for the number 9 bus, but I knew, again with utter finality, that the bus would never come. Yet as I stood on the corner, filled with deep despair, I knew that someone would be home the next time.

I awoke to streaming sunlight
Moving figures everywhere
Parents, sisters, aunts and uncles
And more coming  up the stair
Treasured voices rose in laughter
As I lay there all unseen
Watching loved and long gone faces
Moving in the misty scene
Slowly fading from my vision
As more sunlight filled the room
Deeply sad I felt them leaving
But I shook the dark-filled gloom
As I quickly dressed and hurried
In a laughing, joyful haze
Down the stairs to catch the 9 bus
Back to younger, happy days

For those of us who grew up when
The radio was king
The world is now a very different place
A place where saying love of country
Is the only thing
Now brings a sneer and laughter in our face
We lived in towns and cities where
The doors were never locked
And kids were free to roam the neighborhood
But nowadays those places are
Long gone and harshly mocked
By people who have never understood
That just because we grew up in
A world now in the past
That maybe we had something new to say
That maybe we know something new
About the play and cast
And see we’re not so far from yesterday
That things we saw as growing up
We’re seeing yet again
The world it changes not nor do the times
For history remains the same
Except for where and when
There’s no repeat as Twain said but it rhymes