World's Fair, 1939

My first brave rapport with the future,

magic straight from the pulps,

the architecture of unreality

revived on an ash dump in Queens.

 

In that "world of tomorrow,"

of fireworks and jitterbug life,

depressions would vanish

in shining metal cages

designed by Westinghouse or Ford.

The bullying past was dismissed,

both Guernica's outrage

and Chamberlain's pact with the devil.

 

While royalty begged assistance

against the Stukas,

and whole nations disappeared

in the dictators' neat sleights-of-hand,

I ate hot dogs and begged

for a ride on the Cyclone.

 

We all got a ride on the cyclone.

 

Around us,

secret struggles continued.

Dali's brazen lips

kissed the goddess of darkness,

young men agape,

met the gorgon.

 

For them the "dream of Venus"

would become, not exactly a nightmare,

but a spiritless pleasure,

rare or vicarious:

"I'll marry you and get a Coldspot,

when you've gone and done your duty

we'll settle in Levittown."

 

With starved souls bedazzled

by the claptrap of wonder,

we claimed the whole world

for our comfort.

 

But when Democracity failed

on the grand concourse of their hopes,

my father and mother,

resigned to a hard, dreamless life,

slammed the door on the future.

 

Now, in a new and dire century,

on an earth undone by greed,

I ransack memories to find,

inside my life's invention,

the meaning of progress,

past and future balanced,

like Trylon and Perisphere

at every waning moment

in my streamlined, lost,

and insufficient heart.