When the Book Ends

These days
 the letter's like a freeze frame
 All the old ways
 get cluttered in the bric brac bones of the day
 Now the book lights
 They flicker like the fireflies
 In the long night
 The xerox of our sheets bound back for the day
 Will we sit like old friends
 when the day of the book ends?
 Will we sit like old friends
 when the day of the book ends?
 Feel the spine bend
 the scanners light the loose ends.
 When the letter sends,
 Our voices become flash, like matches to flame
 At your bedside
 You're reaching for the outside
 In the long night
 Our copyrights expire like fires in the rain.
 Will we sit like old friends
 when the day of the book ends?
 Will we sit like old friends
 when the day of the book ends?
 nstead of going out and buying a packaged book of which there have been five thousand copies printed, you will go to the telephone, describe your interests, your needs, your problems, and they at once xerox, with the help of computers from the libraries of the world, all the latest material just for you personally, not as something to be put out on a bookshelf. They send you the package as a direct personal service. This is where weÕre heading under electronic information conditions.