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Do You Know Where Your Towel Is?

(A Requiem for Douglas Adams, d 12 May 2001)

It started as a joke
Ended as a cult
And showed us all
How mind-bogglingly big
The universe can be.

In many ways,
A lot of his work
Revolved around extending our mental frontiers
Showing us new worlds, new peoples, new faces
But all with that touch of earthly familiarity

Time and space
Were toys to be played with
Ideas to be fiddled with
Not fixed or immutable

Now we know what forty-two means
We've met the dish of the day
We know that the Mona Lisa
Has "This is a Fake" scrawled across the canvas
In magic marker
We see a new baroque beauty
In fijords
And look at Norway aware of its award-winning status.
Even cricket is different

And poetry has a new low to seek...

Don't panic.
Although the writer is gone
(Journeying to a whole new destination)
The work lives on
A fitting legacy.

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