Darwin’s Dilemma
When I came at the edge of the desert I saw a flying panda.
You told me that panda’s don’t live in the desert.
It was as if you had seen a panda with wings before.
Darwin’s Binary
01010111 01101000 01100101 01101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100101 01100100 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110011 01100001 01110111 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100110 01101100 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110000 01100001 01101110 01100100 01100001 00101110 00000000 01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101100 01100100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110000 01100001 01101110 01100100 01100001 00000000 01110011 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00000000 01110100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100101 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110100 00101110 00000000 01001001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110000 01100001 01101110 01100100 01100001 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101110 01100111 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Both of these poems are actually the same! The first one was written using a “fill-in-the-blanks” template given to us in class. So I filled the blanks in. With a flying panda living in the desert. It is a short, compact, and funny prose poem. Darwin’s Binary, however, is an experimental poem consisting of binary numbers. It is, essentially, Darwin’s Dilemma written for a computer. I was inspired by Bernstein’s “Lift Off” and wanted to do something similar. Then I go the absurd idea to make a binary poem! Beautiful to look at – quite difficult and annoying to read out loud – but please, give it a try!
– F H Hakansson
F. H. Hakansson 