1913. Peace is wearing thin
in the Balkans. Great powers try their pristine
routine of talks , but only soil white gloves:
Turkey and the whole bunch of Slavs
slash one another as if there is no tomorrow.
The States think there is; and being thorough
introduce the federal income tax.
Still, what really spells the
Pax
Americana
is the assembly line
Ford installs in Michigan. Some decline
of capitalism! No libertine or Marxist
could foresee this development in the darkest
possible dream . Speaking of such a dream,
California hears the first natal scream
of Richard Nixon. However, the most
loaded sounds are those uttered by Robert Frost
whose
A Boy's Will
and
North of Boston
are printed in England and nearly lost on
his compatriots eyeing in sentimental
rapture the newly-built Grand Central
Station where they later would
act as though hired by Hollywood.
In the meantime, M . Proust lets his stylus saunter
the Swann's Way, H . Geiger designs his counter;
probing nothing perilous or
perdu,
Stravinsky produces
Le Sacre du
Printemps
,
a ballet, in Paris, France .
But the foxtrot is what people really dance .
And as Schweitzer cures lepers and subs dive deeper ,
the hottest news is the modest zipper.
Think of the preliminaries it skips
timing your lips with your fingertips!
The man of the year is , I fear, Niels Bohr.
He comes from the same place as danishes .
He builds what one feels like when one can't score
or what one looks like when one vanishes .
