Vale, Pen and Paper

Issue 12, Volume 17

ANONYMOUS

From pulp, to dust! With tears we must
Condemn our trusty pens to rust. 
Old faithfuls down their quills and flee,
On ballpoint steeds retreating. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

O, scribbled naughts! O, inky thoughts!
The handmade prints of ideas taught!
Replaced with cold and soulless keys
Whose marks pine for deleting. 

What would think Poe? O, will we know?
Would Wordsworth, Frost or Yeats cry “Lo!
Ye disrespect the written word!”
Would keys drown out their bleating?

Hast helped us learn! O, how we yearn!
To let your nibstrokes once more burn
Great learnings on our open minds;
Attend our triste entreating!

Farewell, fair ink! Alas! To think
‘Tis we who pushed you o’er the brink
Of obsolescence – nay, of Death!
Hark! The dead march beating. 

O pen adored! No mighty sword
Could fell you: ‘twas the dread keyboard!
Its cooling touch beguiled us all
For use in notes (and tweeting). 

Do we digest our readings best,
Are words upon our minds most pressed,
When we peruse a copy hard,
With thought and focus meeting?

There seems no need, or none but greed,
Our forests, woods and vales to bleed
Of pulp for paper, rubber, too,
And other r’sources depleting!

Dost matter not, the way we jot?
How “t”s we cross, how “i”s we dot?
Our inkless ways come at a price,
And aims are self-defeating. 

This sol’mn advice, included twice:
Our inkless ways come at a price!
‘Tis less through want of care and more,
Because it bears repeating. 
Yet I, who writes with pen despite
The clacking to my left and right,
Use ink composed of pixels too
And write on dig'tal sheeting. 
​
Sent from my iPad

Anonymous is a first-year JD student.