This is this morning: all the evils and glories of last night are gone except for their effects: the great world wars I and II, the great marriage of Edward the VII or VIII to Wallis Warfield Simpson and the rockets numbered like the Popes have incandesced in flight or broken on the moon: now the new day with its famous beauties to be seized at once has started and the clerks have swept the sidewalks to the curb, the glass doors are open, and the first customers walk up and down the supermarket alleys of their eyes to Muzak. Every item has been cut out of its nature, wrapped, disguised as something else, and sold clean by fractions. Who can multiply and conquer by the Roman numbers? Lacking the Arab frenzy of the zero, they have obsolesced: the butchers have washed up and left after having killed and dressed the bodies of the lambs all night, and those who have never seen blood awake can drink it browned and call the past an unrepeatable mistake because this circus of their present is all gravy.
courtesy of Seven Stories Press from Poems Seven by Alan Dugan copyright 2001
