Ode To An iPod

ODE TO AN iPOD

FOR STEVE JOBS

VIA JOHN KEATS

shuffled heard tracks are sweet

but those anticipated are sweeter yet,

the quietness of time expressed in rhyme,

techno-historian, thou canst shape

a smooth glissando, shiny shiny

i would beg to express thee beauty,

O digital lifestyle, deeper than retail,

autotuned in curlicues of sound,

collapsing time pressured into and

recontextualised into a single frame

with each emotional chord striking

the line between past and present

unregulated by any measurable chronology,

only the unbroken line of rhythm connecting,

i think that i shall never see

a thing as lovely as thy symmetry

until the next generation technology

iPod, therefore i am

A literary journalist in ‘The Observer’ was musing thus, about how Poets once wrote odes to things of beauty, but how they no longer do so. John Keats wrote ‘Ode To A Grecian Urn’ he asserts, but no current poet has written an ‘Ode To An iPod’… well, that was a challenge I just couldn’t wimp out of…!!!