Survival

I wonder if, two hundred years from now,
there’ll be some weighty university
drawing together all the stand-out verse
from here, the twenty-first, our century.

Though earlier centuries occupy our shelves
and, if we’re honest, gather dust, who knows
if there’ll be future readers with the grit
to tackle poetry — or only prose.

Will there be books? or even paper? will
the future be entirely chips and codes?
I scribble with a pen (how quaint!) but then
will poets still be juggling rhymes and odes?

What will survive, two hundred years ahead,
to speak our hopes, our words, our grand designs?
There are no answers, nor a crystal ball
to comfort these small scraps, these flimsy lines.

D.A. Prince


If you have any thoughts about this poem, D.A. Prince  would be pleased to hear them