On Productivity

A Work in Progress
105

On average, Virgil wrote about three lines day

Making Aeneid book by book for his patron

Uninterrupted by the Internet’s plectron

A pen and papyrus did suffice to write on

Each book transcribed onto a scroll by hand

Good work for copyists in those ignorant times

While Virgil strolled his farm picking lemons and limes

Avoiding grappling with Roman rules of rhyme

Owing his productivity to a slave economy

Slaves did the work while he wrote to survive

Now editors are deaf to words that don’t jive

They should want proof an author of work is alive

Not a robot employed by an hyperscaler

Creating fiction from fact to make it spicier

Happily reversing a creeping glacier

To focus attention on unbuttoning a brassiere

Whatever can excite be flagged now trending

In a world depending on its digital slaves 

To keep it distracted from the actions of knaves

Supplying pap for whatever masses crave

Were some counterfeits? those scrolls that were made 

As some content today is invented bot spin

Did Virgil suffer identity theft Latin

Someone spinning epic tales stolen from his bin

Each book copied multiple times

For sale to Rome’s far-flung intelligentsia

In Alexandria even far Brittania

A tale of gods heroes desertion mania

His productivity was never an issue

He had enough time to become expert on bees

Did he write a primer on how to prune trees

While he imagined a story of how Rome came to be?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell 

                       2026