[lit-ideas] The History of Effects

From today's "Writer's Almanac":
The History of Effects

by William 
Greenway<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,ctw4,dv,3v6l,g7eq,m9hw,l29c>
 The Bible was created by Bishop Ussher
in 4004 B.C. Then Galileo cooked the universe
too long, and the earth, like a yolk, slipped off
center and everything began to wobble.
Freud needed a reason to talk about sex,
and Marx wrote a bestseller
so he could retire rich.
When the species started to hunt
for their origin, they discovered Darwin.

So now the ears of corn put down
tethers to the earth, trees rake
the wind into piles, the sun turns the world
like a ballerina, the way a magnet whirls
a rotor. Silence squelches the radios,
and darkness the bulbs. Automobiles are invented
to reach the malls, and choppers to haul
body bags, and animals come to live with us
to quench our loneliness and nourish our hunger.
We've begun to love the people who need us
as dandruff rises from sweaters to infect our hair,
and parachutes are the white flags
of suicides that fail.
Julie Krueger

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