Friday, May 25, 2012

Ozymandias, senior med chemist

by Chemjobber

I met a janitor from a run-down lab
Who said: Two vast and peeling poster slides
Hang in the hallway. Near, on the bench slab,
Half torn, a wrinkled photo, with a frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its subject well those structures read
Which yet survive, inked on these lifeless things,
The hand that drew them in the projects dead:
And on the white caption these words appear:
"Ozymandias, senior med chemist:
Look on my works, ye postdocs, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that empty building, tragic and bare
The clear hood sashes still rattle away.

with apologies to Shelley

7 comments:

  1. Who is Shelly? Another unemployed chemist?
    Anyway I like the above, made me laugh.
    Perhaps you could turn it into something like Lowe's "things I won't work with"

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  2. @8:15 Honestly, don't you read classical poetry? I hope you are just joking.
    To Chemjobber: I love it!

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  3. Very well done. If you take requests, I'd like a medicinal chemistry remake of T.S. Eliot's 'The lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock'.

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  4. Do you do long form? Can we get a job seeker's "Odyssey"? And, could you perform it at a coffee shop somewhere?

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  5. How about a chemist's "The Waste Land"? Please, no Proust.

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  6. Combining chemistry with great poetry? You made my weekend.
    Well-parodied.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20