What do we do in the Humanities? I mean, in those classes and language-centered activities classified and pluralized on our UCSC administrative shelves as philosophy, literature, history, history of consciousness, linguistics, American studies, feminist studies, language and writing? Are they immaterial, uncompetitive (gasp) and self-defeating activities that a little engineering might revitalize? Yes they are, I’m afraid, and I can’t help, because looking for the "vital" in revitalize is deadening, as poems and prophetic-style literature keep reminding me.
Speaking of poems, here is one I like by Eugenio Montejo:

The Mill
Turn your blades, old mill, grind
without pause the hours of these days
tossing off husks.
Erase the poems in which I lied,
words that didn’t rise like fingernails
from my flesh; erase
the black guitar of my shadow,
failing to sing as it goes.
Grind this room full of books,
crush its walls stone by stone
until the window alone lifts like a bird
and bears me off on its wings.
Continue to turn at the edge of the world
between my eyes and the wide field.

(translation by Kirk Nesset,
*The Kenyon Review* 28.3[2006], 37)