Except When It's Not

"Everywhere lately, the here and now is the place to be."

How lately it was, how late.
The doggedness with which
The author keeps on trotting
Out the great word already
Seems something old-fashioned now.
Everyman or nobody,
The two were never the same.

One was the salvageable
Hero from sinful wreckage.
The other was the liar,
Always getting himself wrecked.
But that's what it means to be
Old fashioned, to be here now
When the future's outmoded

By its architects' success
At bringing it back alive
As what just happened today,
Profane beast in a great cage
Paraded under the arch,
Poor monstrosity, foul-mouthed
As a legless Glaswegian.

Oh, no one in the parade,
Except perhaps nobody,
Disguised again, beggar man,
His only allies a boy,
A pig herder and, oh wait,
The Goddess of Wit and War,
Knows now how now's moment's done.