O, Cervantes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Since the 1970s, pressure of work on the average person has at least doubled; fewer staff and the common misconception by (too many) managers that just about anyone can be replaced by a computer has been a major contributory factor. Only ten years earlier, my teachers at school had been telling us how wonderful the 1980s would be once machines were doing the lion’s share of the work we were paid full-time wages for part-time hours. [Whatever happened to the Golden Age of Leisure we were promised?]

Oh, but show me a windmill!

O, CERVANTES

One commuter rises

at seven, has to run for the train

at eight after ritual peck

on doorstep, and warning the kids

not to be late for school

Arrives for work wearily,

re-sorts any post meticulously,

checks with a secretary

about what’s worth knowing

on the grapevine

Another day done,

breaks for tea well-deserved,

our hero heads home,

packed like a helpless veal calf

on the continental run

Turns a brassy yale

at about half-six most days,

picking at supper

by seven ten, sends screaming kids

to do their homework

Starts to tell the wife

about his own work, and then...

(Damn, the mobile again!)

A smoke, glass of red, some soap TV,

(pity about the ulcer, scary.)

No outstanding bills, and never

a thing about windmills

Copyright R. N. Taber 1999; 2013

[Note: An earlier but only slightly different version of today’s poem was written in 1972; it appeared in Poetry Monthly (1999) that has since closed down and in All in One Day, Poetry Now (Forward Press) 2001 prior to my first major collection,  Love And Human Remains by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2001;]