Tag Archives: progress

Magpies Chatter In A Winter Sky

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Magpies chatter in a winter sky,
And as I
Traverse this woodland track
I look back
And think on the half-lie
We call progress.

The thoughtful squire,
Sitting by his study fire,
Or on hearing the magpies
chatter,
May have had the same thought as I;
That dreams of utopia,
Shatter,
And turn to distopia
Of the Marxist, or laissez-faire kind.

I would rather the country squire
And the open log fire
Than a society
Where variety
Is spurned, in favour of uniformity.
Or a world where value is defined
By the bottom line,
And nothing is divine.

I Prefer Sitting In An Old, Comfortable Armchair

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I prefer
Sitting in an old, comfortable armchair,
Reading traditional rhyme
As my clock’s regular chime
Speaks of a more ordered time,
To the idea that we must
Forever thrust
Towards some utopian goal
Where my soul
Is nothing when
Compared to the common good
Of collective men.
I would
Rather sit in my armchair
Or, out of my window stare
not at some abstract “common good”
But at a fine old tree
That will outlast me
Unless some vandal destroy that tree
In the name of a better society,
That will never be.

A Transhumanist Heard A Clock Tick

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A Transhumanist heard a clock tick
And said “time I shall lick”.
And the clock said, “progress,
Regress, progress, regress”,
As the hands did trace
The clock’s round face
From beginning to beginning,
Forever spinning:
“Progress, regress, progress, regress . . .”.
And the Transhumanist said,
Nought, for he was long since dead.

Whig And Tory

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The Whig
Was big
On progress. while the Tory Squire
Sat by his fire
And said “let it be
For the ancient tree
Is mainly of good
Wood”.

And what of me
Who all around does see
The venerable tree
Brought low?
I would go
Where the great oaks still grow,
But most of those who should conserve
No longer preserve.

Technophilia

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It will all end in tears before teatime
And the poet’s rhyme
Has nothing to say to those obsessed
With what some call progress.

The technophiles delight
In maintaining the future is bright
And themselves excite
With a dream
That does seem
To others, to constitute a nightmare
Ending in despair.

The neural net
Has not been seen yet.
A place where man himself entangles
And mangles,
Or maybe he
Is free