Twitter

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.