O, America!

The Inner Part

When they had won the war
And for the first time in history
Americans were the most important people –

When the leading citizens no longer lived in their shirtsleeves
And their wives did not scratch in public
Just when they'd stopped saying "Gosh" –

When their daughters seemed as sensitive
As the tip of a fly rod,
And their sons were as smooth as a V-8 engine –-

Priests, examining the entrails of birds,
Found the heart misplaced, and seeds
As black as death, emitting a strange odor.


Louis Simpson

from At The End of the Open Road  1963




The End of the World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb---
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing --- nothing at all.


Archibald MacLeish

1926