I have been searching for this poem for years and years. I first read it in an undergraduate poetry class, decades ago. I had it in a file on a computer many years ago, but lost the file. I was astonished that I couldn’t find it online, only to realize tonight that I had been searching for “back from the word processor” and it is actually “back from the word processing course.”
In any event, I am so very happy to have found it again! Here it is:
Back from the Word Processing Course, I say to My Old Typewriter
Michael Blumenthal
Old friend, you
who were once in the avant-garde,
you of the thick cord
and battered plug,
the slow and deliberate characters
proportionally spaced, shall we
go on together as before?
Shall we remain married
out of the cold dittos of conviction
and habit? Or should we move on
to some new technology of ease
and embellishment–Should I run off
with her, so much like you when
you were young, my aged Puella
of the battered keys, so lovely
in that bleached light of the first morning?
Old horse,
what will it be like
when the next young filly
comes along? How will I love you,
crate of my practised strokes,
when she cries out: new new
and asks me to dance again?
Oh plow for now, old boat,
through these familiar waters,
make the tides come in
once more! Concubined love,
take me again into your easy arms,
make this page wild once more
like a lustful sheet! Be wet,
sweet toy, with your old ink;
vibrate those aging hips again
beneath these trembling hands.
