Paperwork

I sometimes envision
a far-flung, post-apocalyptic world
where piles and piles of documents
fill up the valleys and shores
like whales beached and rotting
 
the wind singing
among the leaves
of carbon white and printed forms
telling Mrs Taylor that
her benefit’s been stopped
because her husband’s got a job
or advising a chemist that
a new lot of cream cannot be sold
as prostate cancer cures
 
it's all online, of course,
these days, but give us information and
we’ll find a way to pile it
 
and I'll move like a wraith among the shit,
in this dream now an alien
post-war, post-bomb, post-human race,
and wonder if  
a letter from
Arthur Pankhurst to  
his local councilman
complaining of the drag queens in
the public library (“offence to decency!”)
is in fact a recipe  
for some great scientific leap
 
before putting it back on the heap