Dispatches for the Colonial Office: Typewriter Telephone Dictionary Thesaurus

Saturday, June 6, 2026

Lawrence Hall

Typewriter, Telephone, Dictionary, Thesaurus

The typewriter is holy

(okay, Ginsberg got that right, at least)

Over the years a series of corded telephones

Stood to their duty next to an Underwood

That’s now stowed away in a closet somewhere

The dictionary and thesaurus are retired

Over the years a series of wordy battles

Have been fought over this Polonian plain:

Thesis and antithesis to synthesis

Theses, structures and sources, papers and poems

Over the years

A little glowing machine now centers my desk

But verse and prose, and you and I, are forever

Dispatches for the Colonial Office