#638 - a quick history of passports

 

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638

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a quick history of passports

 

who can remember the time before?

but let me tell you what it was like

 

a horse could be used

or if you had a daughter, wife

though the Queen of Sheba managed

 

the first one was in the Bible

and we’ll come to that

 

Boadicea was reluctant to let legions pass

but generally, you know

 

we begin with the stamp of a king

on a patch of hide

fists, spears, slippery sweet phrases

good looks and a well preserved sausage

there were trinkety promises too

 

and days you could pipe a tune

skip over just like that

 

and then it came to pass

invention of paper, of print

no one remembers the time before

 

the original passport

was a piece of foreshadowed retribution

no one was singing

it had to be presented at spearpoint

 

this brings us to the old passport

reminds you of anthem and flag

kind of music box

you choke back a tear

it was a new dawn of course

all sunshine and laughter

where will we have a beer once across?

the cakewalk through customs

then the clamour to house

to feed, to carry you off

 

refugees never had them

(embarrassing swarms

stick in barbed wire

and make up the ocean’s floor)

 

those were the days!

 

it was showing around a gift you’d been given

when you didn’t even know it was your birthday

…

 

and now

 

fingerprints, eye scans

many as good as a wad of cash

 

the new passport

is temperature sensitive, iris adjusted  

careful to dodge questions of race

 

rather classification of body by odour

can suck the air out of a country

 

no census for the dispossessed!

 

it’s holographic – so you needn’t even be there

that’s how far we’ve come!

 

you hand it over silently

but the document itself speaks

says ‘all this was done in my name’

 

fresh functionaries grow swiftly older

under the weight of each next confession

 

the new passport

operates columns of figures

coloured graphs in real time –

the carbon footprint, latest extinctions

things never heretofore admitted or known

 

there is no soul but this is its indelible record

moment to moment

a list of intentions too

 

in fact it is all the result of religion

the new passport is a kind of lie detector

to get you through the camel’s eye

there’s no use second guessing though

telling the truth wouldn’t help

 

the new passport reveals your fingerprints

all over the world

it shows your heart on sleeve

rewards passed down for you to pass on

and how you’ll be punished for this