Ed, Meet Kay...

This blog doesn't really do Politics (apart from Old Nige's uncannily accurate prognostications, at which markets and empires tremble) - but there's been no escaping this Milliband business. I doubt the Second Coming itself would get more coverage than the elevation to the Labour leadership of 'Ed', a man with the charisma of a tent peg and the appearance of something Aardman Animations thought better of. His lamentable speech proclaimed that 'We're the new generation' (and no doubt, like the Monkees, 'we've got something to say'). It was of course (what political speech isn't these days?) peppered with talk of 'change' and 'vision' and a 'new start'... With all this ringing in my ears, I stumbled into bed last night and sought escape in my trusty volume of Kay Ryan. Opening it I found not just escape but a curiously apposite blast of wisdom. I'll let it speak for itself...

Least Action

Is it vision
or the lack
that brings me
back to the principle
of least action,
by which in one
branch of rabbinical
thought the world
might become the
Kingdom of Peace not
through the tumult
and destruction necessary
for a New Start but
by adjusting little parts
a little bit – turning
a cup a quarter inch
or scooting up a bench.
It imagines an
incremental resurrection,
a radiant body
puzzled out through
tinkering with the fit
of what’s available.
As though what is is
right already but
askew. It is tempting
for any person who would
like to love what she
can do.