Sunday, May 30, 2010

Louis MacNeice and "Progress"

I acknowledge that I am a hypocrite:  how can someone who maintains a blog on the Internet presume to raise doubts about "progress"?  "In for a penny, in for a pound."  Or something like that.  And yet, and yet . .

                    To Posterity

When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading and even speaking have been replaced
By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste
They held for us for whom they were framed in words,
And will your grass be green, your sky be blue,
Or will your birds be always wingless birds?

Louis MacNeice, Visitations (1957).

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