Still Depends

                

So much depends,

Williams wrote,

on a red wheelbarrow

glazed by rainwater.

I hasten to add

that not every member

of the society from

which he composed

those lines has traded

in the wheelbarrow

 

for a combined harvester.

Some of us purport

still to read on paper

and write with ink. 


A rare animal, Man,

nostalgic and sweet

while the planet

burns under his foot,



although the print

would be lighter

if we give up paper

and make poems

in memory like

the old bards whose


prodigious refrains

are getting lost

in characters

touched on the I-pad.

                        Indran Amirthanayagam, April 20, 2012