When the Book Ends

These days

the letter's like a freeze frame

All the old ways

get cluttered in the bric brac bones of the day

Now the book lights

They flicker like the fireflies

In the long night

The xerox of our sheets bound back for the day



Will we sit like old friends

when the day of the book ends?

Will we sit like old friends

when the day of the book ends?



Feel the spine bend

the scanners light the loose ends.

When the letter sends,

Our voices become flash, like matches to flame

At your bedside

You're reaching for the outside

In the long night

Our copyrights expire like fires in the rain.





MCLUHAN: Instead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems, . . . and they at once xerox, with the help of computers from the libraries of the world, all the latest material just for you personally, not as something to be put out on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where weÕre heading under electronic information conditions.