Meton’s Curved Kanon

The poetry in those days,
Those far-off days, was sometimes
Handwritten and usually

It smelled rather queer, he said.
He went on to other things—
Spycraft, wealth-protection schemes—

Left behind, his magazine
Now reprints those poems on screens.
Don’t write poems at all, we said.

First, compose them in your head.
Then send codes in binary
Somewhere they’ll never find them.

It’s funny which jokes survive,
Which rules, which names carry on.
Train’s left for Cloud Cuckoo Land,

But models still circulate
Like Christmas starter-kit sets
Underneath the evergreen.