poetry :: Copyleft

Homer, this pub philosopher's heard,
created all The Odyssey,
but 'only' edited all The Iliad
combining Hellene colleagues' poetry myth.

These, the songs that began written epic,
became his world's Kernighan & Ritchie*,
are older than Christianity's crutch
and every foolish looping nationalist 'us'.

Yet we, we only hear the single voice.
Works, once published, are inviolate.
This fat respect prevents relay creation.
We adore The Odyssey. We ignore The Iliad.

With 'copyleft', not for the empty, hated by empire,
programmers reuse and revise others' recipes
causing original and imitative solidity;
it could prime a time-long poetic chiro-blast.

Collaboration, writing united, is not the same;
each ego can veto the other's invention.
A copyleft author can declare and decamp;
others may sooth a clash-cultural chaos.

This gnu idea, it bypasses the island man's blindness;
he cannot stop a work deepening across
lives cultures genders generations histories worlds.
Consider the Mahabharata**.

* 'The C Programming Language' by Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie, is a computer programmer's "bible". It's not for wimps, essential for WIMPS, and has nothing to do with WIMPs (weedy men, Windows Icons Menus Programming System and Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, respectively).

** Like The Iliad, The Mahabharata is the source poem for a great religion. Unlike The Iliad, The Mahabharata's religion---Hinduism---lives. It's a pity Hindu bigots have ascendancy in India.

"Copyleft", 29 Sept 2002, © Dylan Harris. Based on "Copyleft", unpublished, © Dylan Harris. You may modify reproduce and /or distribute this poem or incorporate it in another works, provided this copyleft licence remains intact and applies to the complete works. Include or display this paragraph unchanged unless you modify the poem, in which case change the first date to the date of modification, add your name(s) to the end of the list of © holders (if six or more, you may remove the second name(s)), and amend the second sentence to give the date, title, © and version of the poem modified. No other conditions may apply.