Like a faithful dog tied up outside a shop,
Flecker’s quatrains wait across the cent-
uries for an unborn, laggard millennial to drop
by. Burnished transport arches bent
Over oceans, high drone squadrons, out-
Burj-ing skyscrapers in a new Sam-
arkand, James cares not for - no doubt.
But alongside such obvious projected analogue glam-
our, a bit has flipped that changes everything. Books
DRM’d to files, future-inscrutable (it’s hard
To read a floppy even now), and it looks
As if literature could be sloppified to death. Marred
By this thoughtless tech, who then can know it?
Will anyone be able to say: “he was a poet”?
Flecker’s quatrains wait across the cent-
uries for an unborn, laggard millennial to drop
by. Burnished transport arches bent
Over oceans, high drone squadrons, out-
Burj-ing skyscrapers in a new Sam-
arkand, James cares not for - no doubt.
But alongside such obvious projected analogue glam-
our, a bit has flipped that changes everything. Books
DRM’d to files, future-inscrutable (it’s hard
To read a floppy even now), and it looks
As if literature could be sloppified to death. Marred
By this thoughtless tech, who then can know it?
Will anyone be able to say: “he was a poet”?
(22.2.26) v 1.1
