Claude Shannon recently has died
Who in the Forties had studied
Communication entropy:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Douglas Adams has left this Earth,
Upon which he provoked much mirth.
Just forty-two plus seven he:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Donella Meadows too is
dead,
Who wrote about what lay ahead
For humankind in times to be:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Christoffer perished high above it all,
In terror's South Manhattan fireball.
He ran SWIS, worked for OIT:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Professor Nozick, too, alas, is late
Who with his wit could once critique the State.
He couldn't quite praise anarchy:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Now sweatered Rogers, each and every day,
Was kind and gentle -- "in a healthy way".
He'll come no more on the T.V.:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Codd's tuple-logic vision brings
"A world made of facts, and not of things";
And now he joins the ranks of history:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Among those through whose hard-won precedent
We feel secure when we invent
Was Sony's lawyer, Dunlavey.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Inside the park past which his streetcars run,
Since eighty-nine's quake basking in the sun,
A street sign honors Donald Chee:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
So Mr. Paul, who called himself Ernie,
Cut hair of generations roughly three;
He asked respect, not only craftsman's fee:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
My mother set me down by the T.V.:
Returning, found me weeping bitterly.
"You've missed her teaching the soufflé!"
Timor mortis conturbat me.
"We once again beheld the stars" when we
Emerged from darkness, or from misery:
Hans Bethe made us see them differently.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Who was it built the sacred store
Where I encountered Universal NOR?
The pedagogue they called Stanley.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Oh all of you who pass along the way:
Your urban life is built from every day
From which Jane Jacobs made her poetry.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
The ocean of our birth and death
Has borne away the final breath
Of Junger; once he sued Daley.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
If erring twice was Nobel's destiny,
So was it Jack's, serving his industry.
He signed a tape for Annalee:
Timor mortis conturbat me.
A vast thinker upon belief and hope
Saw limits for philosophy's right scope:
So Richard Rorty lived with irony.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Inviting children to his house to see
Some daily wonder worked out splendidly:
To us Don Herbert seemed most wizardly.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Lorenz had found that close is no cigar:
What now is near, in future may be far.
Then all may be omnipotent, yet none can see.
Timor mortis conturbat me.
So many jests to Limpang-Tung you brought!
From magic gardens of culture and thought —
Not least was Life, not least was RSA:
Timor mortis conturbat me.