On Quality

"Ah, but will it be remembered in, say, ten years,
fifty years, a century? Well? you query,
when faced with art the fickle public reveres
but you find cheap, 'irrelevant' or dreary.
Never mind that this is resorting to revenge
(or revenge fantasies) for no injustice
yet committed. Never mind you let it hinge
on hazy criteria (what if our worst is
more memorable than our very best? What if
everything is stored online in virtual libraries?)
Never mind that your question is more emotive
than fair, or that once the proposed century's
elapsed we'll all be too dead to make you eat
your words. And never mind that you're asking Time
to do your dirty work. No, what's rich as pete
is that every single work of art, from the Sublime
to the Savage, from the Gently (or not) Elegaic
to the Frightfully Surreal - it all goes to the fires
of the Universe eventually, the great mosaic
of space-dust. Ain't you read Ozymandias?
And when it does is really neither here nor there.
After all, Eastenders will outlast most poetry
and neither of us have to know or care -
you can grab what you like from what we call 'society'.
If you bank on the future with a bloody great sneer,
you'll look like an ass, you can bet your goatee,
or is the automobile still 'a fad, I fear'
(to misquote a diehard horse/cart devotee)?
Put your energies to use - go out and throttle
every artist who thinks he's a budding immortal.