It Took TV to Civilize ...

It took TV to civilize our village

and bring our stubbled codgers up to date.

Up skyscrapers new notions percolate;

into our channeled valley drips the spillage,

where junkyards cover fields once used for tillage.

Our means are modest, but the needs are great

that softly sung commercials can create.

Some call it enterprise; I call it pillage.

When every crank and far-flung solipsist

knows about Prell and Dristan Nasal Mist,

who doubts the unity of Western Culture?

Tuned to elections, watching babies kissed,

viewing with awe the murdered anarchist,

what lone Promethean liver needs a vulture?

Richard Moore

From Word from the Hills, A Sonnet Sequence in Four
Movements, University of Georgia Press, © 1972.
Originally printed in Sparrow.  Reprinted by permission
of the author.