GOLDEN TREASURY OF ...&;#063;

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THE POET

"Hail to thee blithe spirit," I intoned, concentrating on the purity of
my vowels and the clarity of the consonants, "Bird thou never wert,
that from heaven or near it, pourest thy full heart, in profuse strains
of unpremeditated art."

Then I pressed a key and waited for the computer to save the
transcription to its hard disk.

I had just purchased an audio digitiser software package, extravagantly
praised in last month's computer magazine. With its use, I only have to
read one of my poems for it to be translated into digitised letters and
words, or even translated back into speech to be broadcast in a tinny
voice from the computer's synthesiser.

There came a ringing from the hall and my wife summoned me to answer
the telephone. It was my editor, or, to be exact, the tyrant who ran
"New Poetry", a quarterly magazine which published my work.

"Kevin!" I said, trying to appear surprised. But I knew what he was
going to say.

"Arthur, old boy. I'm still waiting for that poem you promised me last
month."

"I'm just revising it. You know how we poets work -it takes a morning
to put in a comma and afternoon to take it out again."

In fact I hadn't even started it. The Muse had left me off her visiting
list for a month and I couldn't think of anything to write. "Bear with
me for a week," I suggested, and rang off before he could reply.

"That was Kevin," said my wife accusingly, "You really ought to do some
work instead of just playing with your computer

The computer is what I work with, I was going to tell her, but decided
not to bother. Women don't understand computers and we had had this
argument before. I ate some lunch and decided to spend the afternoon
gardening.

"I thought you were going to do some gardening," said my wife when she
brought tea and cake out to my deck chair.

"It was too hot."

"I sent your poem," she announced

"What poem?" I said, sitting up abruptly, "I haven't written
anything."

"I found it in a file on the disk. It was dated and timed so I knew you
had been working on it today."

"Have you been messing with my computer again? I told you not to. You
don't understand them. You could easily destroy the files."

"Don't be silly, dear," she said calmly, "Just remember I ran the
computer department when I was in publishing. And who do you think
taught you how to use them? I sent the poem by e-mail."

"But it was only an audio digit, or whatever you call it, from the
'Golden Treasury'. What will Kevin think?"

"It didn't read like anything out of Palgrave.You must have got things
mixed up again."

"I'll have to ring up Kevin and explain," I said, ignoring her comment
on my mental ability,. "I'll do it tomorrow."

But the next day I decided that it would only give Kevin the chance to
pester me again. I would wait for his next call.

Two weeks later I was in my deck chair thinking about the poem I was
going to
write when inspiration returned. My meditations were interrupted when
Sheila called from the kitchen, "Come quickly! It's Kaleidoscope.
They're talking about your poem."

But by the time I reached her the piece was over. "It was that young
man who reviews literature," she explained, "He says you've struck a
blow against post-modernism."

"What absolute nonsense!" I said firmly, "He was taking about someone
else."

"He wasn't! They said Arthur Keating's poem was a reaction against the
simplistic banality and chopped-up prose of post-modernism and looked
back to the elusive but evocative obscurity of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound
and e.e. cummings.They even quoted a bit which I recognised from the
file:
Ale, toffee, lithe spit..."

A horrible thought came into my mind and, without listening to more, I
rushed into my study, switched on the computer and displayed the
digitised file on the screen. It read:

Ale, toffee, lithe spit
heard now everywhere
crap from heavy or'nary
pompous awful art
improper stains of medicated fart.

"What did I tell you?" asked Sheila smugly, "He said you were referring
to the work of our respected Poet Laurate."

"What shall I do? I moaned, my head in my hands, "How can I write my
usual stuff after this? I shall have to tell them it was meant to be
Keats

But then I had an idea. I looked at the desk. Yes, there was Palgrave's
'Golden Treasury'. I opened it at random, set the audio digitiser going
and began to read:
"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying."