The Book of Lamentations

God forgive the book-less masses, and indeed the mass of men,
For, forever from that firstling's fall, our lot has been decline:

After apples came the rind; then the trees dropped fruit
To rot on thorny breaks, and He gave us to grind,
The men their fields, while women whined
Sucklings conceived in voluptuous time. And theirs was labour:
First the hoe and then the plough, who forced the rugged earth
Into a fruitful crime – then walls, and ships who climbed
The slops of barren seas. Trade and congress, cuneiform,
All followed spice, the orange, and then the subtle arts of pleasure:
Cooking, math and letters. And when this race of leisure now
Looked upon the sky, they cried, "We've lost the gardens, trees
That burgeoned chestnuts, ecstasies of limes, shelter
Of the boughs and rolling, drumming clouds." And all discovery
Was fire from the gods, whose suffering attendants, ennui
In cruel repose, the pallor of sleep, protection from the gentle snows
(And not to mention every ill we gained from clothes!)
Brought boundless shrieking furies, clawing vengeance
To whip our armored backs, to foul our luscious treats,
Along with flatulence, domesticated beasts! Can we ever find
Good digestion now or hope to free our verse from rhymes?

As if the horrors of a Pasteur weren't enough, the Wright
To travel sullen leagues in bounds, and revocations from a gruff
Receiver (saving us our lesser innovations, I mean days
Of wheeled travel, or worse still – though better than our present vamps –
The postage stamp) now, with an ominous, electric click
Professors can search every text for any sullen phrase
Without the sage-scratched margins of more antique days.
What happened to the dusty, choked technology of Bibles past?
We mourn for the loss of Terwiliger's gloss, the margins where he scrapped
His academic genius, now become so much pedantic taste. Will I ever know,
Terwilliger, why you thought that all of Hamlet's words (Act 2, Scene 2,
Three lines before 195) were – I can't quite read your note, did you say "jive"
Or "waste"? But really what enrages me the most, seeing that
Our libraries have been replaced by novel fruit, is that
Without the need to root the regions of my wallet's inner-space,
Or bend under a heady weight, I can sate my curiosity for Balzac
Or Rimbaud, and all of Proust, sans culottes or even shoes!

So the moral of this witty grime: those first things are
Which are best, nature's unripe green is gold, and we should strive
To regain the recession (soon to be perdition) of those infant times.