For Steve Crewe
A journalist friend of mine in Jakarta
sends me articles online, which, in turn,
I share on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter,
making me seem, after Francis Bacon –
who was purported to have read every
book ever written – the most erudite man
in Europe: an article, for example,
explaining that Plato was right when he claimed
the world is made of cubes, or another
about cougars in Yellowstone Park
occasionally dying from the plague.
The internet brings to my door swizzle sticks,
and tea-lights, the Selected Poems
of Norman Rosten, and the Complete Writings
of Phyllis Wheatley; provides unfettered
knowledge or illusions, the schooling that suits,
that sticks; takes instant messages of protest
to my MP, and the Prime Minister;
bonds me to an ubiquitous tribe
of iconoclasts; shows me not only
that the Emperor has no clothes but also
there is no Emperor nor ever was.
As I write I think of who might read this
published on my website – in sunlight
on their phones, beneath a lamp, rain drubbing
on window panes; at what latitudes
and longitudes, on what continents,
in what tropics and what temperate zones;
actual and virtual friends, and strangers;
a humbling fellowship.
By David Selzer