Your Attention Please
(Peter Porter)
YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE
In the famous and oft-publishes two-minute warning, the warning is not a caution for those particular people. It is an announcement for the whole of the human race, how man is cutting off the branch he is sitting on .Immersed in a world of money, material and munitions.Human values and human life has deteriorated. In an era of war and competition the only victorious ones are Time and Destruction.This becomes obvious when the poet repeats?two and a quarter minutes? and ?eight and a quarter minutes.?We are reminded of the futility of life as in Philip Larkin?s ?Ambulances?.It is ironical how ?a specially shortened mass? will be telecast- even spirituality deteriorates.The announcement says that Protestant and Jewish services will begin simultaneously.This reflects how in the face of death all communal rivalries vanish into the thin air.however, only human life is given value here as people are asked to abandon their pets., as they will consume fresh air. The callousnessness of the contemporary generation is revealed in the fact that the old and the bed-ridden have to be left back. The mention of ?Valley forge?,a medicine for painless death gives rise to the paranoiac sense of victimization.
In an ironic tone the writer says that the President has given orders for Massive retaliation. The ordinary citizen has no say in it. This becomes more prominent when the writer says that ?statistically it is unlikely to be you?.
Another characteristic feature of the poem is the clever portrayal of the plethora of science and technology in the modern era. Nuclear weapon itself is a child of science and technology. However, the helplessness of science in tine of a calamity caused by itself is brought out in the poem.
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