Whatever your mother told you was the truth:
That television, plugged into the wall,
Would wait till dead of night, then kill you all!
And hence the vacant sockets of my youth.
This was the ritual – kneel and grope around
And tug the plugs from flaking skirting board.
The wrath of the electric gods, ignored,
Would raze a sleeping household to the ground.
Now, every gizmo, gadget and appliance
Boasts of its safety, seems so far from vicious
That to unplug seems, at best, superstitious;
At worst implies a disbelief in science.
So, who’s this, at sixty, shuffling about,
Watching the little pilot lights go out?
Andrew Deacon studied English at Trinity and taught it at The King’s Hospital School, Palmerstown. His sonnet Lucan Geometry won The Irish Times/Shelbourne hotel national poetry competition
That television, plugged into the wall,
Would wait till dead of night, then kill you all!
And hence the vacant sockets of my youth.
This was the ritual – kneel and grope around
And tug the plugs from flaking skirting board.
The wrath of the electric gods, ignored,
Would raze a sleeping household to the ground.
Now, every gizmo, gadget and appliance
Boasts of its safety, seems so far from vicious
That to unplug seems, at best, superstitious;
At worst implies a disbelief in science.
So, who’s this, at sixty, shuffling about,
Watching the little pilot lights go out?
Andrew Deacon studied English at Trinity and taught it at The King’s Hospital School, Palmerstown. His sonnet Lucan Geometry won The Irish Times/Shelbourne hotel national poetry competition
