The Poetry Corner

What Colour Is Love?

By Paul Cameron Brown

Sixties idols were built to last. A 70's idol is shoddy and throwaway by comparison. Whatever became of Carnaby Street or bell bottoms? The mentality is alive and well (another dreadful anachronism) in smart up-town boutiques. The proprietors, though, don't sell little bells to freaks anymore. Luxurious Persian rugs, instead, are all the vogue. And bail money for vendors hawking copies of Guerrilla on the streets of Toronto or Black Panther leaflets in US cities isn't needed anymore. Who was Bobby Seale? Who remembers? The first generation in history, a new consciousness... Remember the Greening of America? Escape From Freedom? The futuristic think tankers? consciousness III? Bombers turning into butterflies? Today's B-52's are punk rockers. I like my memories, retreat-like, hazy in myopic seclusion. I suspect social historians for the pleasant dribble they write about the age. The age, like it spanned a thousand years, opened new epochs. More like Adolf's remark about his millennial Reich. Some doubt the authenticity of the Holocaust. I doubt the sixties. It, too, lasted what seemed twelve years.