THE ROBOTS HAVEN'T GONE AWAY, YOU KNOW

The robots haven't gone away, you know. That's probably why the poetry editor of 3 Quarks Daily posted my poem 'Please Hold' in his Sunday Poem slot quite recently. In fact, 'Please Hold' has been my most published poem of recent times, having first appeared in Southword, a Cork-based magazine, then in The Forward Book of Poetry 2009, then in the Anthology Poems of the Decade 2002 – 2011 (Forward/Faber, 2011). It was uploaded to Youtube from a reading I gave in the White House Limerick, and also from a Reading at Ó Bhéal, Cork. I published it in my collection Life Monitor (2009), from where it has been selected to be translated into Slovenian for a collection just published in Ljubljana. And here it is again, from 3 Quarks Daily. 

'Please Hold' is an apoplectic rant in verse about the 'new-fangled' impersonal telephone system on which you'd be lucky ever to hear a real human voice. Invasion of the robots! 

3 QUARKS DAILY

JUNE 02, 2013

SUNDAY POEM

Please Hold

This is the future, my wife says. 

We are already there, and it’s the same 

as the present. Your future, here, she says. 

And I’m talking to a robot on the phone. 

The robot is giving me countless options, 

none of which answer to my needs. 

Wonderful, says the robot 

when I give him my telephone number. 

And Great, says the robot 

when I give him my account number. 

I have a wonderful telephone number 

and a great account number, 

but I can find nothing to meet my needs 

on the telephone, and into my account 

(which is really the robot’s account) 

goes money, my money, to pay for nothing. 

I’m paying a robot for doing nothing. 

This call is free of charge, says the mind-reading robot. 

Yes but I'm paying for it, I shout, 

out of my wonderful account 

into my great telephone bill. 

Wonderful, says the robot. 

And my wife says, This is the future. 

I’m sorry, I don’t understand, says the robot. 

Please say Yes or No. 

Or you can say Repeat or Menu. 

You can say Yes, No, Repeat or Menu, 

Or you can say Agent if you’d like to talk 

to someone real, who is just as robotic. 

I scream Agent! and am cut off, 

and my wife says, This is the future. 

We are already there and it’s the same 

as the present. Your future, here, she says. 

And I’m talking to a robot on the phone, 

and he is giving me no options 

in the guise of countless alternatives. 

We appreciate your patience. Please hold. 

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Please hold. 

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Please hold. 

Eine fucking Kleine Nachtmusik. 

And the robot transfers me to himself. 

Your call is important to us, he says. 

And my translator says, This means 

your call is not important to them. 

And my wife says, This is the future. 

And my translator says, Please hold 

means that, for all your accomplishments, 

the only way you can now meet your needs 

is by looting. Wonderful, says the robot 

Please hold. Please grow old. Please grow cold. 

Please do what you’re told. Grow old. Grow cold. 

This is the future. Please hold.

.

.

by Ciaran O'Driscoll

from the journal Southword

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