Progress

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.