sadly this is neither a nightingale nor a Grecian urn, but I wrote it an Ode anyway
Here’s a further reflection on my ambivalent relationship with all things Apple, an ambivalence I suspect many of my readers may share, wonder at what can be done, awarenes of loss as well as gain, an occasional reflection on whether a device that brings so many freedoms might also turn out to be a form of bondage. Anyway, here it is a light(ish) companion piece, I suppose to my earlier iPitaph on an iPad.
as always you can hear the poem via audioboo by clicking on the title or on the ‘play’ button. I must say that there was a strange frisson in reading into my iPhone, or perhaps to my iPhone a poem which was in fact addressed to it!
iOde
My private portal to a world between,
My placeless place of virtual exchange,
I see through you though you remain unseen
And make familiar what you once made strange.
You make a stranger means to make me ‘friend’
Whom I can ‘touch’ to ‘like’, to show I care.
You make a means to every unknown end
And make one little screen an everywhere.
I am familiar with a hundred faces,
All famished for their fifteen minutes fame,
I am half present in a hundred places
But never present in the place I am.
I pull you from my pocket when you call
I touch and swipe as I am bid to do,
You do my bidding too, you do it all,
What will you make of me, or I of you?
