Give my regards to the well-protected woman,
I knew the ice-cream girl, we went to school together.
There's something to bury, people, when you begin to bury.
When your women are ready and rich in their wish for
the world,
destroy the leaden heart,
we've a new race to start.
MURIEL RUKEYSER
Speak to
Me
of M ussolini!
" . . . . the feet alone are to be
II
meters long ....
"
"Excellency,"
the simpering reporter says,
"what homage would you have
posteritypay you?"
Excellency screws up
His Excellency's mug
Zillof
His Excellency is about to speak
An
oracle! an oracle!
a purge for Pythia
an enema for the Sibyl
and,a dose of salts for the Sphinx
His Excellency is speaking now
"Let lovers choose my statue
astheir trysting place
let young couples say
'Tonight with Mussolini'"
They are building a statue to Mussolini
the young Fascist balillas
that is to say
Mussolini
is
building a statue to Mussolini
out of the lire and centesimi
chippedfrom the young balillas
a statue of bronze old Vatican Peter
big toe kissed away by the fervent lips
of Chicago aldermen
shall have nothing on II Duce
a statue
66 meters tall
the tallest in the world
the biggest in the world
they are propping the slopes of Monte Mario
with reinforced concrete
to hold Benito's weight
Where now is the glory that
was
Rome?
the Seven Hills
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
that piker Trajan and the Via Appia?
Mussolini
is
66
meters tall!
bronze athlete (?) in a lion's skin
right hand raised in the Fascist salute-
A'Vantif
face
7
meters from forehead to chin
and the feet
11
meters
Si, cara mia,
meet me tonight
under Mussolini's hoof
The babbo and the mamma they met there
true they're not here now
the babbo died in Ethiopia
the mamma starved at home
but they always came together
under the shadow of the Duce's heel
that shadow lay upon them and between them-
Oh,
parle.z-moi d' amour
f-as they slaved at love
to man more tanks and planes-Giovinezza!
youth always at his feet
Si, si, carissimo,
I'll meet you there
"Tonight
with Mussolini!"
SAMUEL PUTNAM
Of Thee
What do we know of this country, where is its heart,
what does that heart say-
Snowed-in, deep under white piles of Sunday newspapers
higher than the Great Divide;
Focussed down to a pinpoint, hundreds of miles behind
the other side of the movie screen?
Shall we again converse with the professors,
or talk
with the Bureau of Standards?
Should we bore deep inside the monumental mansions,
deep to their plush cores?
What can the City Editors tell us, what can they say
which they have never said before?
What will politicians and torch-singers promise, which
they have not promised before?
Look long along the eyes of transcontinental
rain, and
the rays of the sun and moonbeam-
Roofs, trees, smoking chimneys, cities at the crossroads,
houses out in the countryside;
Growing fields, brambles, deserts and rolling hillside,
snow-birch, cactus, alder and elm:
What is there in the heart of this nation and country
which has not been in any other,
Which has never been in the heart of any man, nation,
people, rac~ and century?
JAMES NEUGASS
