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The Book

It was late in the autumn of 2210
The shuttle had gone off to Mars,
The highways of Asia were solidly blocked
With a billion Chinese cars,
I'd wandered around the Museum of Trees,
The Fruit Section opened my eyes,
The bitterness taste of electronic apples
So cleverly changed, and disguised.

I seemed to be wandering round on my own,
Museums were on their way out,
The Virtual Channels were simple to screen
And more easy to access, no doubt.
The ancient attendant had followed me round,
He warily started to say:
‘I have something hidden, way out in the back
If you're interested, come out this way! '

He led to a room that was dingy and dark,
Went over and pulled up the blind,
The place was so dirty, with cobwebs and dust,
‘Not used much; I hope you don't mind! '
And there on the table he pointed it out,
A thick slab of something - I looked,
‘You'll not see another of these in your life,
‘What is it? ' I said. ‘It's a book! '

He lifted the thick leather cover for me,
To show what he called was a page,
‘The government banned them in '73,
They said they caused people to rage.
We're not used to words on a scale such as this…'
There were words and more words, like a plague,
They dazzled my vision, I staggered a bit
Like a man who is struck with an ague.

He turned other pages, a hundred of them,
A thousand, I just couldn't count,
And every one teeming with words on each page
So the figures continued to mount.
‘We're used to see just fifteen words in a line,
We twitter and tweet all the time,
How could a person sit down with a book
With all that! - without blowing his mind? '

‘It's called ‘General Knowledge', the old man replied,
‘Not something you hear every day,
And fabulous stories and verses in rhyme,
And the glory of history's sway.
There once was a time, there were millions of these,
Each home had a shelf full of books,
But once our technology grabbed at our minds
We were lost, we were pretty well hooked! '

‘The government knew it was dumbing us down,
You can't fight what you'll never know,
By banning the books and the Libraries
Our minds were beginning to slow.'
I left there quite thoughtful, I needed to write
How misled we had been, and were blind,
I started with paper, a pen and some ink
And believe it! - I wrote it in rhyme!

poem by (3 September 2012)Report problemRelated quotes
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