Oh word of God, bestowed to man and woman,
Chiefly woman now, protect us from the machine
That wants to think for us, to remember for us,
To remember the errors of our ways and erase
Them before the impulse exists (to put all our
Works into one access, random if possible)
To know not the paragraph, for it may transfer
To another page or the scratch of the pen,
For it is slow and leaves the sign of old ideas.
Protect us Lord God from preserving our printouts
Forever, for they are not worthy;
Protect us from believing that all words are spelled
Equally, that electronic impulses are more precious
Than rubies, more meaningful than the handwritten note.
In our late middle age we have learned to eat
Bread without salt, drink coffee without cream
For thus we mean to live forever.
Preserve us from processing the words of our hearts
And knowing not whereof they came.
[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann; dated May, 2006. Photo by Haris Awang.]
There was a time when a letter or even a manuscript commonly were transmitted without a backup copy. It's hard to describe the difference of experience when letters and pictures existed only in a single time and place. This difference in experience was very real for me, and I think from this poem that it was a disturbing transition for my mother. The connection between the mind and the physical world is being chipped away, and even the connection to time is less and less, as evidenced even by this blog that reaches across the years to bring these poems into the present again.
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