86. 
What then is bravery, a word, a noise, 
A puff of air? Go scowl in fortune's face,
Since being brave is only your good luck. 
You're glad your liver wasn't eaten long
Ago. Go, Hitch and glare the quasar down.
Seeking disputation over truth,
You won your fame, prompting fools 
With passion's full intensity and great 
Conviction to declaim their hate or praise 
Of things opposed, the heroes changing horse
Mid-stream, for Borodino now, and now 
Against. We are so weak, so frail, so slight,
So evanescent, yet we can envisage 
Perfect love and grace. Infinity 
Provides the fertile womb of God. Our need, 
Our boundless need, across the cosmos, would, 
Through endless yearning, yield a Lord of skill.
Brave Damocles, thank your amygdalae. 


Imagination is the key. . .    
Machines will poison everything. . .    

85.
"But didn't he also fight to make the case that we need to inquire freely and constantly? Isn't that what is behind his assertion that there are no final solutions, no absolute truth?" 


"Maybe, Mrs. Olyphant, but the Houyhnhnms reasoned that perhaps the Yahoos should be liquidated. Reason is a whore. We can't trust her. There must be some absolute barrier when it comes to meting out death. How is that based on reason alone? We all are going to die anyway. We all live under the sword of Damocles. Why not truncate the life of this annoying human? Everything about Mr. Hitchens manner of delivery suggested he could indeed imagine doing in his enemies. There was more than a soupçon of Madame Defarge about his attitude. He had the aspect at least of a classically trained Machiavell." 


Cole: "And he was so sure there could be no god. Of course we know in our hearts there is a god and she is the devil."  

84.


 "Hitch believed in happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom. Silly Romantic."
 "You don't believe in those things, Mr. Cole?"
 "Belief is a weasel word. I'm not sure anything has any meaning. Why would it? I think we all can be destroyed without a moment's notice. We stand on a great precipice that will erase not only us but all of human history. What is all this scrambling about?" 

 Ridge: "Oh, fragile we."

83.
Ridge and Mrs. Olyphant were out on the sun deck -- she reading the news on her iPad. 
   "Oh, Christopher Hitchens has died," she said. 
   Ridge: "He didn't like T. S. Eliot. But for all the wrong reasons. He reminded me a bit of Orwell: a man who could only read a book from a political angle. Charles Dickens, not a good Marxist. Of course with Hitchens it was, Graham Greene, just another Marxist. Don't need him." 
   "Why didn't Hitchens like Eliot, his anti-Semitism?" 
   "He just didn't think The Waste Land was good poetry. I have to admit that it isn't poetry that many people have memorized. I will show you fear in a handful of dust is a paraphrase. In Michigan we liked to joke about April being the cruelest month. There it is completely accurate. Not so much in Georgia."
   "But Eliot was so influential. Surely, all of the poets and novelists who were reading him and responding to what he wrote weren't wrong to appreciate him." 
   "We would have to ask the Hitch, and he's dead. Of course, there are any number of things not to like about Eliot's poetry. The way it is always focused on providing salvation for his people humble people like he's some kind of poetic Uriah Heep. He was the great writer making a 'raid on the inarticulate,' he was the articulate artist, don't you know. We are just the "general mess of imprecision of feeling, undisciplined squads of emotion.' And now under conditions for poets that seem so very unpropitious. It truly chokes you up."
   Cole: "Don't be an envious douchebag, Ridge." 
   "What do you mean, Mr. Cole?" Mrs. Olyphant asked.
   "Ridge is trying to show you he hasn't lost the common touch. He's not a snob. There is no hierarchy of men. There are no great books or great ideas. It's just one big flat egalitarian plain." 
   "I take it you think that is not true, Mr. Cole?" 
   "I think it's crap and should be flushed with the bilge. Eliot was articulate. He had a gift and he worked hard at saying something. Faulting him for that is how we ended up with plainspeaking dunces like W." 
   "Mr. Cole raises and interesting point." 
   "Because something is interesting does not make it correct or expedient," Ridge said.  
  

82.
The ant wants
To see with those eyes
To walk with those legs
To be forever an ant.
To never be an ain't.