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  • The Privacy of Typewriters
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The Privacy of Typewriters

Les Murray

I am an old book troglodyte
one who composes on paper
and types up the result
as many times as need be.

The computer scares me,
its crashes and codes,
its links with spies and gunshot,
its text that looks pre-published

and perhaps has been.
I don’t know who is reading
what I write on a carriage
that doesn’t move or ding.

I trust the spoor of botch,
whiteouts where thought deepened,
wise freedom from Spell Check,
sheets to sell the National Library.

I fear the lore
of that baleful misstruck key
that fills a whiskered screen
with a writhe of child pornography

and the doors smashing in
and the cops handcuffing me
to a gristlier video culture
coralline in an ever colder sea.


Les Murray

from Waiting for the Past (Carcanet, 2015)

Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Tags:

fear luddites paranoia police technology troglodyts writing poetry
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Les Murrayb.1938

Les Murray is a poet, anthologist, editor and critic. He is originally from New South Wales, and over the past forty years he has published nearly thirty volumes of poetry, alongside two novels in verse, and prose collections. In 1971,...
More about Les Murray

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