Poetry – From there to here in a breath – change and progress
From there to here in a breath
I was recalling the tales told to me by my grandmother. She saw the first cars and the space shuttle. She talked of the first planes made of paper, wood, wires and a propeller that crawled across the skies.
My mother talked of children playing in the streets without shoes, having their feet bound in rags for winter; of people being sewn into their clothes for winter.
I remember the milk and coal being delivered by horse and cart, the man coming round to light the street gaslights.
In the sixties the first computers the size of rooms running on cut-out cardboard.
Will there ever be a time when things have changed so much?
For centuries people went on doing things in the same old way. The pace of life was slow and change unheard of. Then the industrial revolution, invention and capitalism; the speed increased. It was all about progress – which basically meant someone making money. The rate of change has been stupendous. You blink and the world has changed.
Is it good?
From there to here in a breath
Form horse and cart
To space shuttle.
From dirt road
To motorway.
From stretched paper,
Line and prop
To turbojet.
From gaslight
To electrical appliance.
From unshod feet
To fashion shoes to throw.
From the soils of the earth
To the dust of the moon.
From an early bed
To late night TV.
From starving children here
To starving children there.
From one war
To a host more.
From a switchboard
And black Bakelite phone
To text and go.
From a letter on a horse
To an email.
From a reference book
To Wikipedia.
From a village
To the world.
It’s a long way to travel
In a single life.
Opher 18.4.2014
These are my six books of poetry. They are available as paperback or on Kindle from Amazon – all for under £5 for a paperback. You could buy the whole lot for just £27.62!!
They are not conventional poetry books. They are like you find on my blog with a page of explanatory prose followed by the poem. The prose is as important as the poem to me.
Codas, Cadence and Clues – £4.97
Stanzas and Stances – £5.59
Poems and Peons – £4.33
Rhymes and Reasons – £3.98
Prose, Cons and Poetry – £4.60
Vice and Verse – £4.15
I wonder how your grandmother would answer that question.
She did not approve. She always told me that the food tasted better back then, people had time to talk and appreciate the world, that nature was plentiful. She thought we were going backwards.
I’m glad to hear that, Opher. 🙂
I think it’s time to start putting things right – starting with getting populations under control.
🙂