"Connexion" Poem 3 from "A slur of tense"

 

“Connexion”   Poem 3 from “A slur of tense”

 

October 1962 was not a happy time for the world.  I was perfectly happy as it was my twelfth birthday and the Cuban Missile Crisis did not unduly worry me.  In fact, it didn’t worry me at all, so if things had gone the wrong way and the Russians had not backed down, I could have been incinerated in a state of bliss-full ignorance as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD – never was an acronym so apt) destroyed us all!

A year later I had become much more politically aware and the death of JFK shook me.  I seem to recall that the newsflash on the BBC was after The Harry Worth comedy show and the progressive revelation that JFK was dead and that he had been assassinated produced yelps of horror from my parents and me.

I am sure that the element that strikes youngsters on hearing the way that the news of the death was relayed to the populations of the world the most, is the slowness of it all.  The world was a much bigger place than it is today.  Today mobile phones give an immediacy that we did not have.

The poem uses a Dickens’ serial on the BBC (of course!) to explain the difference in expectations.  This classic serial was of Great Expectations and was broadcast on a Sunday week by week for three months and that was the time it took to see it – no shortcuts.

Nowadays, things are different and we are getting nearer and nearer to the Sci-Fi ‘ideal’ of almost instantaneous communication.

But the poem’s end points out the irony of our live today as compared with those savage days in the 1960s!

 

Day 3 Tuesday

 

Connexion

 

 

It could have been,

if happenstance had tailored irony to

my twelfth birthday cake,

that when I blew the candles out

life could have followed too.

 

The Cuban Crisis passed me by.

October ’62?  Unwrapping gifts,

and first half term at Grammar School,

not MAD and Doomsday Clock,

were my concerns.

 

The world was wider

and the news was slower then.

 

The death of Kennedy in ‘63

made me politically aware –

though first transmission,

Doctor Who, the day before,

likely touched me more.

 

In ways newspapers weren’t,

the Beeb was the fast source

of what went on – though

eighty minutes passed

before we knew that he’d been shot.

 

Now news, worldwide is instant –

so’s so much else that’s not.

 

When I was eight, in black & white,

I watched a Dickens’ serial on TV,

Great Expectations, half an hour each week

from April to the end of June.

 

We’re not well trained to wait:

‘binge watch’, ‘catch up’, ‘replay’

feed our attention deficits.

 

‘See it or miss it’ is a warning

from another age.

 

We’re not well trained for idleness:

twitching thumbs must have their press

with pliant keys, responsive screens

and friends (within quotation marks)

co-responding in electric life.

 

Conversations, always present,

ongoing, not left behind –

the ‘past’ is now a slur of tense.

 

In ’62 we lived two minutes short

of Midnight on the Doomsday Clock.

 

Today, when we are all in touch

with everyone and everything,

we’re twenty seconds from the end.