Seventy years ago, I addressed the pressure
History applies to creativity and society,
Let us say, news more pretentious than
Any description of it, but that pressure
Built over ten years, and lead to war.
First was email, then the cell phone.
First taped warfare, then live battles.
First CNN, then twenty-four-
Hour news cycles. Back then I said
Pressure is incalculable,
But that ten-year-weight was
The pressure of a light breeze,
And here we are now living
At the bottom of the ocean.
Every second a million tweets,
Each barely an imagined thought,
Two-hundred friends burbling inane
Scribbles in every ear, a thousand
Humane causes demand attention.
Immediateness infinite,
Contemporaneity compressed
To instants, a new era of the imagination
Begun in each one, a great noise
Washes out our presence.