Zippered

Witness arrives as wounded Conscience
standing aloof under street lamps
beside neon ripple
beneath skyscraper mortality

Before it

Lining New York's Public Library sidewalk
zippered black Nanobot bags confine
printed and bound intelligence like frozen ice
broken by storm and quake

Spines and pages enmeshed
history upon stacked history
knowledge once free to just be
now as rubble held tight
awaiting caravan by air-glide dumpsters

Conscience moves up the marbled steps
like visitors first finding the pyramids of civilization
visiting manifest of Time's later
civilization's 42nd and 5th corner stone

This edifice to Man's advancement
children's exposure to what has been
adult's learning of what might be
now destined as cavernous shock and awe of another kind

Evident Conscience moves through pillared entrance

Listening

Seeing

Pained ether roils within
vacuous marbled bastions
their mourning loss conceded
their synaptic sorrow weeping
now but diminutive ghosts of

Sanskrit
hieroglyph
and Roman text

Turning back to the streets
as air-ride's floating destiny arrives
bags are robotically lifted on air-belts
one last gasp of learned breath moves from hard cover to soft
acquiescing beneath suffocating blackness

Tail gates close

Conscience solemnly asks

What gain
comes of fear-entrenched ignorance

Where be the glory
of blind-progress's spoils

Why indulge the salute to what might be momentary gain
while Time's honored wisdom is made to succumb

Conscience contemplates

What happened

Why such a fear

Why such a gamble

Into the night
silent vehicles travel
arriving at launch pads to infinity
where bodies of millennia knowledge
await becoming the ion-propelled barges of space-fill

As launches continue
questions dwindle
resistance wanes
mind matters less

Conscience ceases

Fear remains