“I want to say one word to you, Benjamin, just one word…”
Contact lenses, spectacles, disposable razors,
Medical heart-valves and pencil erasers,
Sterile packaging, gloss paints and superglues,
Motorcycle helmets, fibreglass canoes,
Polytunnel farming, gas- and gutter-piping,
Multicoloured buttons, and click-a-clacker typing,
Hygienic nappies, and vegan-friendly footwear,
And yes, all the litter that ev’rybody put there.
The truth is that we need it,
That we cannot live without it –
Except of course we did
Before we ever knew about it.
But look at all the progress that we’ve made –
Can we lose it all ? I doubt it.
Self-healing polymers, handle-safe explosives,
Tin-can inner-linings to make contents less corrosive,
Lego bricks and credit cards, LPs that we cherish,
Electrical cables that will never fray or perish,
Damp proof courses, and cavity-foam walls,
Artificial limbs and teeth, table-tennis balls,
Satellite shielding, acoustic guitar strings,
Hyper-fibre optics, and a thousand other things.
The truth is that we need it,
That our lives are better for it –
We need to use it less,
But we surely can’t ignore it –
The future’s soft and flexible – be careful,
And we’ll all get to explore it.
Rhyming Couplets 