Here lies our eldest general
That historical figure
Who commanded upright from the vests and the purses
The phone numbers from pretty mouths and permission from the speechless
Signatures from recipients and lists of broccoli and peaches

O' stilt of the hand
O' whimsical flute

Push a ballerina script
Push impertinent ideas for colleagues to decrypt

Now a new generation of fingers can pull clean out of their pockets
And clack like a billion skeletons dancing

On the day of the dead
In a theatre
For the tourists
While all the while eating

The Magna Carta, the anarchist scratchpad,
The deed of sale for 162162a 42nd Avenue,
The suicide note on a kitchen table in Lexington,
A poem to a Beatle,
A corresponding pair of sisters in Dubrovnik and Arkansas,
The immaculate volumes of thinking and invention,
From the Pharoah's court to Pfizer's board rooms.

Here lies the little wand
A casualty of data
Toppled like a bestial redwood
In a very informative storm
- its dignity intact.
It fell without disease
With one short-lived exception:

In 1998
A small company in Texas
Invented a digital pen before,
In 1999, filing
For bankrupty,

Amen.