Precious, If Rare Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

A man once saw his yellow pee,
Wowed, can it make me prosperous?
Wondered, if what glitters gold be,
But alchemy found phosphorous!
So, all that sparkles is no gold,
Nor yet yellow per se is gold,
It is what makes things precious,
And what makes it so, rarity—
That, things are hoarded, held and holed.
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Initially phosphorous was literally made from human pee. Searching for gold in days of alchemy, this new element invented shined in the dark, and was more precious than gold. But once it was produced industrially and in bulk, it was no more so precious. One might say:
Not what may glitter and glare,
Precious is what remains rare.
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Tongue-in-cheek | 03.04.2017 |