Saturday, April 10, 2010

Off the Cuff 9: 1964

Today's first poem comes from a conversation with Alice White and Kevin Brophy, in which we were discussing a TV program about the last indigenous people to come out into the world of Anglo Australia, after their wonderful reading at The Wheeler Centre.


1964

The year the last of us
(whom we call 'them')
walked down from heaven
left the desert, the land

was the same year
my Fourth Form (we now
call 'Year Ten') Maths teacher
announced a treat

and someone we'd now
call 'a nerd' set up
a large piece of equipment
which played music

based on binary language
and called it 'computer'
(subtitle: the future)
We couldn't get over

how you could take
music out of human
hands and mouths like that,
and what kind of culture

spent time on this
obviously useless idea.

NaPoWriMo

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