Knowledge Zippered

Witness arrives as wounded conscience,
standing aloof under streetlamps,
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 ignorance.

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

Conscience moves up the marbled steps,
like visitors first finding the pyramids of civilization,
visiting manifest of Time's later civilization

noted at 42nd and 5th Ave. 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.

Civilization?