OUR LAST P O ET
4.
In this way was ended the first of two great flights by the poet,
De Parter. ,.yhen he awoke, it was to stare into the happy face of
J.P., at whose house in Palm Springs he was convalescent for various
kinds of debility incidental to the production of the greatest extant
poem of the age, immediately published in a small volume entitled
The Transit Beam,
or
A Straight Voyage Between Two Perils.
"Oh boy!" said J.F., "What a poem! They're saying there aren't
twenty people alive today who can understand it!"
It was generally agreed, in the Athens of the Far West or at least
in the highest society of the place, or to be more accurate, in that
segment of society that counted the most, that J.F. had reached the
ultimate pinnacle of prestige.
De Parter himself had no real conception of J.F.'s position, since
poets are known to be careless about most kinds of social lines and
compartments. It mattered most to him that the producer no longer
had the aspect of the hideous ogre that had snapped at him across
the desk, and had made him feel his isolation so keenly that he had
rushed out of the presence of it in an access of fear and rage, not
stopping until he had attained the farthest reaches of the desert, and
had there exorcised the demon with a great surge of honest writing.
J.P. was now once more the pleasant, tanned-faced man with glasses
whom De Parter recognized as a friendly, if limited, protector.
But the ogre merely slumbered. Four months later, three weeks
ago, with the nation heavily engaged in official war, and with everyone
tensely waiting to be obliterated, De Parter saw the beast again, in the
same way, but now decorated with horrid, flickering, sick shades of
green and red, putresc;ent colors, and accompanied by machine-made
sound effects of battle, imitating human groans and shrieks.
This time, in full second flight, the poet howled, "I'll never come
back!", and repeated it as he ran through the outer offices, his voice
diminishing with distance, and finally heard, dimly echoing in the
great rotunda-lobby of the main studio building, at last a distorted,
sobbing scream,
((I'll never come back!"
"That's what you said the last time," softly replied the iron–
nerved executive.
The small man inquired, "Should we follow, Boss?"
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