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Progress

Douglas Dunn

There they are, widows of the professoriate
Tied to their frail routines, but not unfree
Wheeling their shopping zimmers on Market Street;
And octogenarian still-cycling emeriti
Cautious of cobbles and slow-moving cars
Hunting for elusive parking spaces –
Physicists, medics, classicists, astronomers.
Gladly I yield to their seniority,
Their ancient tweeds, their wrinkled faces.
I would like to be a venerable sage,
And might be yet, if I can reach that age,
Nodding off over a Loeb in the Library
Half-way through a forgotten declension,
Defeated, yet again, by Livy’s prose.
But I gave up my bike ten years ago,
Terrified of traffic on the A91 –
And that was on the pavement. I suppose
That so-called ‘progress’ overtakes us all –
Superfast fibre, electronic bravado.
Where will it end? That’s what I want to know.
It’s years since I saw an icicle.


Douglas Dunn

from Second Wind (Saltire Society, 2015)

Reproduced by permission of Douglas Dunn.

Tags:

ageing experience latin and romans technology windows wisdom
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Douglas Dunnb.1942

Douglas Dunn is a major Scottish poet, editor and critic. He was Professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews from 1991, and was awarded an OBE in 2003.
More about Douglas Dunn

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