dash
Monkey See, Monkey Will

Monkey See, Monkey Will
Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds
[A] new peer-reviewed study […] has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.                          BBC News 1st November 2024  

                                                                                                     
monkey with
        typewriter

The Library of Babel
Holds monkeys (anglophil),
Who sit – just one per table –
And type the works of Will.
 
Though harried and though haggard,
They stick to this one stunt:
To recreate what Jaggard
Created first with Blount

(For though it’s rarely stated
Which text it ought to be,
They’re strictly dedicated
To 1623).

As years and decades roll on,
They fail and fail again:
Some misplaced ſ or colon
Makes all their labours vain;

No time to greet their fellows,
Their eyes too dry for tears,
They pound their near-Othellos,
And almost-quite King Lears.

Unbowed though not unbloody,
They serve the Law of Odds;
But now a Sydney study
Suggests this might be Sod’s:

It seems, before their trouble
Pays off, the universe
Will be reduced to rubble,
Or something even worse,

And so, since their ambition
Is one they can’t fulfil,
They’re free to ditch their mission
And bid farewell to Will.

But no. They’re set upon it;
They have no dreams but one:
To do each play and sonnet
Which Will’s already done;

And if you’d like this story
To keep some meaning now,
Take it as allegory,
If you can work out how.

Julia Griffin

 

If you have any thoughts about this poem, Julia Griffin would be pleased to hear them

logo