Cut Away a Piece of the Mandelbrot Set and Get a Smaller Mandelbrot Set

Don’t look it up—not the easy
Way, not by dint of scholarship.
After all, who is the hero

Scholar in the libraries’ tombs
But a physically committed
Person with a searching question?

The difficulty of the task
Is no more the measure of how
Morally worthwhile its success

Than the bitterness of a pill
Measures its strength of medicine.
People without the means to move

Can now access databases
Vaster than any Bodleian,
Albeit without the cachet

Or the thrill of proximity.
And what were manuscripts except
Brain-easing storage devices?

Still, discipline yourself for now.
Don’t look it up. You’re a hermit,
So be one with few books or none.

What will you say, what will you spin
From your decaying memory,
Prone to the worst poetic sins

Of cliche, banal abstraction,
Jig-jog doggerel prosody,
And vacuous declaration?

Wait, that’s what machine mind’s best at!
Does it matter to poetry
Whether you find knowledge at all?