Poem – Paula Green

1984

Copernicus has no idea what to cook for dinner
or whether to change into something cooler.
He can’t stop thinking about books
that have changed his life.

You were twenty-nine and saw no signs of mind
control 24 hour surveillance doublethink newspeak
when you cycled from London to Heidelberg.
Not in a science fiction kind of way
that demolishes free will or sticks
foreign objects in your head.

There were slick adverts that saw you
reaching for better butter
and history books that kept shifting
your point of view.

Plato has dropped by with a well thumbed
copy of The Bone People and a bag of mussels.
He tosses the mussels on the barbecue
and then carries on reading.

Paula Green

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