Robert FrostThe Telephone
(Martin Johnston said that if you want to
communicate use the telephone.)
—John Tranter
To phone and not to speak. Hello
HelloHello HelloHelloHello Slam!
To heavy. To ulcerate. To terroize
at 2am. To alibi not to alimony.
To lie, of course—hidden by fifty by
fifty storeys, hills, a mountain range.
Not to mention Federation. No faces. No grimaces.
To stall with a phone and a natural resource—
time, until upturning dollars or the next ice age
or both freezing dole queues and apologies.
Dial God. You’ll have the Bible on tape.
The line’s been dead for two thousand years.
Your Christmas greetings can be to wherever
you don’t want to be for Christmas.
To hoax. To false alarm. To flush out a
corporation’s nerve centre in ten minutes
without even a handbook on explosives.