In our blessed digital age

 

            Everything is

 

            Either or

            On or off

            In or out

            Plus or minus

            Up or down

            Left or right

            Top or bottom

            Win or lose

            Positive or negative

 

            But mainly

            One or none

 

            Forgetting for the moment that in the matter of digits

            There are really ten or twenty

            Depending

            And that you can’t count on

            Nothing to exist

 

            I suppose you can explain the growth of trees

            The evolution of a pout

            A sudden whimsy or a summer haze

            As the culmination of bureaucracy –

            Left right, left right, left right

            Forward march –

            If you’re so inclined

 

            Unless perhaps you chance to hear

            Caruso on a gramophone

            And grow suspicious of the virtues of division,

            However fine