Phonographic Memory

"We have not come so much to a fork in the road
As a fork on the plate
Scraping the last lick off the gravy train of history"

There was nervous laughter round from the dais
That rolled outwards through the crowd
On a breeze that rustled flags and banners

It was the voice of Orson Welles
His baritone coming to us
Over decades of dead silence through a metallic tannoy
Each word meticulously tape-spliced
From various soundtracks and radio broadcasts
In the Library of Congress

It wowed the crowd before it fluttered and faltered
As the powder of lost oxide caused a catch in his voice
Just as the spool ran out

Curiously, the simulated address
Seemed to be delivered in the same, strange, stage-Irish accent
That Welles had possibly purloined from the actor, Michael MacLiammóir
When he had bluffed his way onto the Dublin stage as a teenager

Now it was just one in a queue
Of immigrant inflections that might have taken the day

It was also the voice that Orson had used in "Lady From Shanghai"
You know, the one with the shootout
Amidst the shattered reflections of fun house mirrors

Few remembered that motion picture now

One man in the third row remarked to his wife
That he seemed to remember this voice
Selling him sweet sherry in his youth
But there were many in the crowd
Who knew nothing of this
"Citizen" and the "Kane" he had once raised
Back when the worst one could imagine
Was an invasion from another sphere

After the peace was negotiated
And the internet switched off
Knowledge returned to its medieval cloister
In this and that illuminated volume
The jealous possession of the pious and the superstitious
Who might once again wield ignorance like a scythe

There were but dimly remembered facsimiles
After many of the public libraries had been torched
Untouched books now went for the price of a Vuitton handbag

Ever since the U.S. Mint was sucked dry and spat out
Bookworms paid for rare tomes
With wheelbarrows full of banknotes
Some of them worthless Confederate money
Stashed in plinths of various toppled statues
They bartered it on a Mississippi square
With the irony and arrogance of victors

None of it helped the healing

Yet in the absence of a noble woman
Or a statesman equal to the task
A tireless engineer had magically assembled
The random words of Welles' oration
Into a speech worthy of the occasion
From the depths of the national archive

President Swift gave a slight, shy smile
Of pearl and pillar-box red
And began to sing a plain song of her acceptance