Maybe we can set things upso that politicians take their speeches from poets.The masses will have to eat their dogmawith sauces of irony, side dishes of metaphor,and sprinklings of negative capability.People will be compelledto think things through before voting.They’ll learn to rave less about retributionand more about poetic justice.Being unhappy will be more fun;being different will be more entertaining.Artists, inventors, and businesseswill be less constrained by whether their work will sell.Television shows will cut out the laugh tracks.Talk show hosts will laugh at angry callers.People will go back to collegeand teachers will earn more than lawyers.Being impractical will lose its sinfulness and illegalityand become merely impractical again.At the same time we’ll need to make surethat poets don’t start acting like politicians.
