(With apologies to Frank R. Scott)
⁓
How shall we speak of Brooklyn,
Jan Maas retired?
The Mother’s boy in the lonely room
With his dog tags, his breviary and his ruins?
He blunted us.
We had no shape
Because he never took sides,
And no sides
Because he never allowed them to take shape.
He skilfully avoided what was wrong
Without saying what was right,
And never let his on the one hand
Know what his on the other hand was doing.
The height of his ambition
Was to pile a Committee on a Task Force,
To have “decorum if necessary
But not necessarily decorum,”
To let the Administration decide –
Later.
Postpone, postpone, abstain.
Only one thread was certain:
After arriving for work
Business as usual,
After lunch
Orderly decontrol.
Always he led us back to where we were before.
He seemed to be in the centre
Because we had no centre,
No vision
To pierce the smokescreen of his politics.
Truly he will be remembered
Wherever men honour ingenuity,
Ambiguity, inactivity, and library longevity.
Let us raise up a temple
To the cult of mediocrity,
Do nothing by halves
Which can be done by quarters.
2002