62
PARTISAN REVIEW
Paul Goodman
WINTER 1939
In 1934, 5,
then were we alive!
after the experiments,
to few (and to no) audience
making art extreme because
of imminent utopian applause!
Then too the sit-down strikes
made flower Michigan for weeks
when the lads played basketball
in the interim of toil
-in the April and the June
of the decade now so coldly gone.
The prudent days were those
we took each thing for what it was!
then action was direct,
much therefore done by a little act,
till fixed institutions were
trembling on the brink of order.
When acts of witty power made
the energetic shoulders broad
disgraced themselves in '29
at last ashamed,-oh, then, then
a human smile was sometime seen
as well as th' universal smeer.
It
was a time of fearful ease;
it was a time of waged peace.
In 1934, 5,
then we were alive!
in the April and the June
of the decade coldly gone!
But first new money gave new heart
to nummies we had almost hurt;
and soon' we saw that 'revolutionary'
ignoramus meant and liar;
and now at last they have their war.
