Where Are You Now? Poem by Brian Taylor

It was different in the past.
Especially in the village.

Before you could read
Before there were newspapers
Before there was radio
Before there were telephones
Before there were films
Before there was TV
Before there were computers
Before there were smartphones
Before there was the endless whispering
of global gossip,

You lived mostly where you were:
on the street
in the room
at the market
in the church
in the inn
in the fields.

You lived mostly where you were,
suffered face to face with yourself
and your neighbours.

As you grew older, your Past lengthened
and you began to live in it
with that diminishing group of friends
who lived there too.

Things are different today.
No matter where, untidily,
you park your body
or put it on auto-walk
auto-eat, auto-read, auto-talk,
auto-computer, auto-TV,
you are usually meandering
the surfaces of the earth
or plundering
the mists of cyber-space
and the mysteries
of Imagination’s Daughters,
Past, Present and Future.

Your suffering enshrouds you like the veil
in a premature womb-tomb;
and any way you look at this you fail!

“Hey, hey, hey? Mrs. Robinson?

Hey, hey, hey! ”