I

The arcadian past is dead.
Perhaps it never was.

On one hand a golden vision
Of gallant and splendid men.
Cobblestone dreams,
A rustic thirst,
Renaissance, invention,
A proper bow and curtsy.
The Paradise Garden and
The hedgerows of old-
Glint in the eye of the nostalgist.
Our forebears
And the open heath.
Idyllic.
Would that it still were.

On the other a practical frivolity.
Spoiled milk and discarded scraps,
Leftovers thrown out.
A forsaken time
Of blood roar and cannon,
Disease and fetid stink,
Myth and choking smoke.
Avaricious heads
Atop pauper bodies.
Ancient tombs
Built of Hebrew tears.
****** sacrifice
To hideous and foreign gods.
Barbaric.
Finally, it is no longer.


II

We, being young,
The ungrateful and resentful,
The unabashedly alien-
We are the new now.
We turned away from the trappings of
The teachings of the wise.
We sneered when those dotards
Taught us their language,
Their rules,
Their type.
We laughed when
They corrected us,
Told us not to say that.
We detached from the decrepit womb,
Formed as their inverse,
Reflecting their faces
While defying their antique sensibilities.
We grew of our own volition,
Created our own language,
Etched our own runes,
And,
Ultimately,
Shared with them
Their very graves.


III

I, being young,
And of the here,
And now,
Have been elected
Into something
So much more
Than contemporary,
Than modern,
Something so inherently
Now.
I have been gloriously birthed
Into this open present,
This wonder of
Internet
And knowledge.
The exertions of our fathers and
Our mothers' cyclical toils
Have built such a steadfast bridge
Upon which the constant contrivances
Of our Now
Race around in dynamism.
Aware of my place
In this successive age,
I fervently embrace
Our Now,
Not to reject the past,
Never,
But to nurture its nascent chapter.

                    -c. c. Condry