George Wallace
In Times Like These
How pleasant in times like these to plagiarize the orthodox, mock the powerful, set fire to the tabernacle of grift and lay dry tinder to the commonweal.
How pleasant to ridicule the mounted police playing headless croquet, unhorse them and strip them of their pride.
The age of censorship shoots rainbows out of little boys’ eyes, let us rob it of its ammunition.
In times like these the unpleasant melodrama of unregulated wealth festers in broad daylight. Women wearing arabian slacks are disrobed and discarded. Their gentlemen fall prey to beggars on the pavement, with their trivialized nightmare bellies and battered eyes.
Money hides in kitchen cabinets. Essential workers undermine the stock exchange.
How pleasant the denouement. How pleasant the trolley conductor who seduces the stock broker’s wife. Cops gather in small circles and utter curses upon the people, let us demob them and redistribute their joy.
Tear down the celltowers! Defile the clerics! How pleasant to be unpleasant in times like these.
The city is agitated. The city is on guard. High windows shudder with every armored vehicle passing. There is a shrinkage in the land.
In times like these I have seen the pavement boil like a great molten sea, and was glad.
Other work by George Wallace