The Next Epiphany

Now in this final age,

the financiers have spoken.

We saw, we three, the dream gleam in their eyes.

 

We came in the executive saloon you can believe in,

guided through dark by loggias of small hotels

alive with images of credit cards.

 

We’d love to stay and ponder,

but the managers who ordered Time have taken tea

and gone to the hush of scented drums.

 

Tonight if you asked the hour, it’d sound quaint,

a system someone used to know

like pennyweights and drams. 

 

There is no time:

they speak, the sponsorship executives

who promise to say yes:

 

“Combinatorial genomics preconceptualize

the zenith of the value chain trajectory

by risk-evaluated paradigms analogised to gist.

 

“You will find the novel entity

beneath an exponentially computerised, self-generated plot

of web-enabled object model capability.”

 

Sages, leave your newsprint waving in the chilly draughts

of launderettes! [won’t Angie make it fun, in the sun?],

follow where the urban lights have led—

 

It’s here! – a passageway beside a shuttered shop

brightened by blinking phosphorescent strips,

the panel at the further end proclaiming “EXIT ONLY”.

 

“A pre-contived admittance artefact”, cries one,

“Such that, when we had time,

we quaintly called a door.”

 

“‘Exit’,” says another, “articulates the structured egress

of our pensive pith

into hierarchically laminated joy.”

 

“Or,” the third exclaims, “the way

from in-there to out-here.”

The first stands rapt. “Inevitable progress

 

links to architected tendency constraints.

Does ‘Exit’ signify a going-out, a coming-in,

a going-in or coming-out?”

 

There is no time. Suspiciously we eye

the empty neon streets and speak as one:

“It all depends which side you’re standing on.”

 

Beneath the ‘EXIT ONLY’ sign, the pasteboard fascia

shows a crack, through which the seeking eye

discovers darkness broken by a single silver screen. It reads:

 

“This programme has performed

an illegal operation

and will be closed down.”

 

A sphere of red and blue and green

emerges on the monitor, revolves, grows wings,

recedes and turns to the homogeny of night.