To ennui most modern of sins
A new sin has been added
Too new to have a name
The commuter supplants the insouciant flâneur
The solipsist ousts the secretly gay observer

There are no streets to amble
All embark for private worlds
The slender wires white or black
The heads bowed in submission
Realms of new sensations new celebrities

New tribes new enthusiasms
New luxuries new frissons
New crimes new indignations
New achievements in unheard-of endeavors
New spectacles of elaborate failure

New abstraction of image from thing
All are freed from the heavy weight
Of bodies animate or inanimate
In blank material space
Gone forever the libidinous touch

I have more memories than if I had a thousand years
From screens that receive the white-hot projection
Screens excited by electron rays
Screens composed of picture elements
Screens that illuminate and divide