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!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Doreen]

Yes! It's a sad tale because it's so true. Technology will be the death of us; people walk along like sheep not realizing this. Heaven forbid we should know what Big Brother is up to; we, the people, might just do something to change it. Books are becoming antique, which is sad. I can't imagine a life without them. You penned this perfectly, sir. Very well done. :)

[MoriartyMesa]

The touch of Old World and New Era of man are always touched, none so than in this.

[Androglossia]

This is a very interesting write. It made me think of the movie The Book of Eli. And I agree with Doreen's thinking. Technology can stagnate the brain. Nowadays, technology displays more and more important role. Humans are becoming subservient and dependent to machines which threatens the primal way of living into extinction. Thank you for the good read, sir.

[Marie]

I wish I didn't have to agree with Doreen, but I do. I feel that reading books--actually sitting down and turning pages--is on its way out. I don't think the government will ban them; they will simply be crowded out by new, more efficient technology. I'm only glad it won't happen in my lifetime.

[MOON]

Lovely write poignant too we loose ourselves in technology and soon the smell and feel of a book will be ancient history and perhaps the dumbing down of society.

[Distant horizons]

Brilliant. And possibly a hint at things to come. My previous job was as a librarian and i left when they decided to take away a third of the book space to fit pc's. Libraries here are more like cafes now.

[Clayton Bardwell]

I like to read your poems out loud to no one there. This was hard to read. Not because it didn't roll of the tongue, but because it was hard to hear my voice saying these words, your words. I'm a photographer and I didn't believe we would loose film in my lifetime, but we have. I dread the time when books are gone.