Maglev Sonnet
A high-speed magnetic sonnet went off its track
in northwestern Germany on Friday, killing at least
one passenger and injuring several more, sources said.
Officials at the scene described the sonnet’s first stanza
as being totally mangled. “We must prepare ourselves
for the fact that those lines are not living any more,”
said one critic, who shall forever remain nameless.
He was talking to emergency officials. Besides those
first-stanza lines, two other quatrains were missing
and feared dead. How fast the sonnet was traveling
at the time of the accident was not immediately clear.
Eighteen tropes are still trapped in tangled wreckage.
The accident is another blow for magnetic levitation
after a fire last month in a Shanghai-bound ghazal.
—Halvard Johnson
Posted by dwaber at May 9, 2007 12:27 PM