Poem Written in Times Square (thinking about Ian McEwan and his not so saucy bark)

This poem is addressed to Ian McEwan.  You see I've just finished reading one of his latest novels - Saturday.  And I have to say I was pretty disappointed.  I've always enjoyed McEwan's novels going back to one of his earliest, A Child in Time, which I remember reading in college, or shortly thereafter, and thinking here is a major talent.  But this latest book falls pretty far short of the mark in a number of ways, most of which I won't bore you with right now.  For purposes of explaining this poem I've just written, perhaps it's only important to say that McEwan's story culminates in a particularly cheesy fashion with a creeky plot device that turns on one of the character's recital at knifepoint of Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.  Saturday comes across as one of those very English novels that attempts to describe the way we live now but somehow with the intrusion of the crusty old Dover Beach there in the story's climax it all takes on a very Victorian air, as if McEwan is disclosing nothing so much as his very own drawing room self.  This is precisely what strikes me as so disappointing about the book.

That being said, here is my poem for Ian McEwan.

With nary a puff

Yet already my lungs

And my chest

Start to twitch

On a cold winter night

Such as this

And after digging in

To the stash of ghee

In the studio fridge

I've caught enough 

Inspiration and drift

To venture a poem

Here and now

Walking fast

Through the midst
Of Times Square

I’d be hard pressed

To ignore the

Spectacolor screens

Hanging high overhead

On the Vornado Realty

Billboard atop

1540 Broadway

Or on the proximate

Block heading downtown

Where a guy from the Cheetah

Club proffers his business card

I'm lit up just as much

As the Great White Way itself

Only now it unfolds in this HDTV

Display lining both sides of

The street

No doubt there’s

A visual correlative

Of Moore’s Law

Which tells us that

Every two years

The resolution will double

Yet there's no doubling

 In our acuity

Visual or otherwise

As the signal’s

Received in the mind

Of the beholder

Our own perspicuity

Not having changed

Since Victorian times

It seems we’re still lamenting

That note of sadness and
The long withdrawing roar

Of the waves crashing

Whether on Dover or

Sagaponack Beach

It matters not in the least