Louis MacNeice




To Posterity

When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards  
And reading and even speaking have been replaced 
By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you 
Will find in flowers and fruit the same colour and taste  
They held for us for whom they were framed in words,  
And will your grass be green, your sky be blue, 
Or will your birds be always wingless birds?