Hey Bickerstaff,

                                   My friend, it’s sad to see
You set your leaky pen to poetry,
Or tax WordPerfect (stet), or noble daughter
In vain to fix to sheet what you shouldn’t oughter
With each spent punkt – indeed, to read
That vision, melody, verse – outfoxed the deed.
If poems came to all who blindly trust,
Your cleric’s job, my poet’s, would be dust.

Of course, some old books are still worth a shelf,
A 3-foot one, a 7.5, or even twelf,
To keep the “canon” steady (thereon the brood
Of English profs can safely screw the bulb).
The war of mods and ancients is not old,
It’s ancient – spawns dark rings each time retold,
Thereby assuring children grab their mittens
Or iPhones, iHats, whatev – when its tale threatens.

For the past’s a playground, we are merely players;
The past collides with us like blind surveyors
(Lacking the requisite marks), overruns our glens
As Hurricane Katrina New Orleans,
Re-zoning lands, ignoring a feeble FEMA
And makes of the present past, and the past prima.
Words once rich, like “hella,” “refudiate”, and “lol”
Soon rust, unpractised, in that cave where Grendel fell.

The past becomes opaque when fixed like stone,
The “great names” weigh like Rushmore’s pantheon;
A leper colony’s walls conceal their riches,
The names themselves the uprights, beams and ditches.
Release the past to play! of the present, cease
To demand, as sign of health, enforced disease
Of chaining flux to stone, or of voyants ranging –
The present knows no truth but that it’s changing.

And why should students look to us to tell
Them what to read, when each home library’s full
Of Butler, Roth, Ellison, Stoppard, Barth-
Elme, Hurston, Parks, Delillo, Siebald, and Barthes?
Berryman, Ashbery, Ash, Doonsebury and Muldoon?
Doesn’t every home stack these besides New Moon?
A bookstore is a daunting place to be,
And sans a dot com’s recs, one opts for coffee.

Despite the many pasts the present rends,
As many rise to amplify its sense.
No need to mourn the L.F.M.’s long demise,
Already, a B.F.F. opens its eyes,
A major that can house the Major, but sings
In poly-tones, like the ‘pillar’s rainbow wings.
In hipper slang, we’d call this Major virtual,
(He already is, some say – in league with Grendel).

So, this is not some tale from Swift, no clique on clique,
The past is still in English, or “Englishes,” but not Greek.
Perhaps it is a war of ying and yang,
That swirls like mocha java to sate our pangs.
To Jameson, the present’s pastless, so we look back
At nichts – the past should aim to soothe the lack.
Thus, against the glitz, we’ll embrace, “forever” friends
– No candle burns as bright from half its ends.

Love,
Th3 4ng3l 0f H1st0ry