Business and Human Rights in Verse: Poem I

This is the first of 3 efforts to approach 'business and human rights' issues in another way. Poem 1 is entitled 'Big Data'; Poem 2 'Supply Chain' and Poem 3 'Extractive':

‘Dance the Guns to Silence’: some Business and Human Rights in verse

Dr Jolyon Ford

Associate Professor of Law, Australian National University

                                                                                                                                                November 2018

I.

Big Data

Auden felt it years ago,

His senses taut and pricked with light:

The gloom that gathers when we know

We cannot know truth, or wrong from right.

Aggregate my many selves,

Average out my patterned moves;

Analyze my weakest points,

Accept the truth that the Data proves.

You are more than just the sum

Of your coded self, something more

Than the image that the moment holds.

When this drops in and tells you things

You did not know about your life,

Remember that we yearned for this;

Accept the truth that the Profile tells;

Know that if blame is even worth it now,

In truth we did this to ourselves.

                                                                                                                                 Canberra, 10 October 2018