A Poem of Profound Insignificance

I

Out of the reaches of illimitable night

The blazing planet grew, and forc’d to life

Unending cycles of progressive strife

And strange mutations of undying light

And boresome books, than hell’s own self more trite

And thoughts repeated and become a blight,

And cheap rum-hounds with moonshine hootch made tight,

And quite contrite to see the flight of fright so bright

I used to ride my bicycle in the night

With a dandy acetylene lantern that cost $3.00

In the evening, by the moonlight, you can hear those darkies singing

Meet me tonight—in dreamland... BAH!

I used to sit on the stairs of the house where I was born

After we left it but before it was sold

And play on a zobo with ,wo other boys.

We called ourselves the Blackstone Military Band

Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come home?

In the spring of the year, in the silver rain

When petal by petal the blossoms fall

And the mocking birds call

And the whippoorwill sings, Marguerite.

The first cinema show in our town opened in 1906

At the old Olympic, which was then call’d Park,

And moving beams shot weirdly thro’ the dark

And spit tobacco seldom hit the mark.

Have you read Dickens’ American Notes?

My great-great-grandfather was born in a white house

Under green trees in the country

And he used to believe in religion and the weather.

II

“Shantih, shantih, shantih”...“Shanty House”

Was the name of a novel by I forget whom

Published serially in the “All-Story Weekly”

Before it was a weekly. Advt.

Disillusion is wonderful, I’ve been told,

And I take quinine to stop a cold

But it makes my ears... always...

Always ringing in my ears...

It is the ghost of the Jew I murdered that Christmas day

Because he played “Three O’Clock in the Morning” in the flat above me...

Three O’Clock in the morning, I’ve danc’d the whole night through

Dancing on the graves in the graveyard

Where life is buried; life and beauty

Life and art and love and duty

Ah, there, sweet cutie.

Stung!

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole

I never quote things straight except by accident.

Sophistication! Sophistication!

You are the idol of our nation

Each fellow has

Fallen for jazz

And we’ll give the past a merry razz

Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber

And fellow-guestship with the glutless worm.

Next stop is 57th St.—57th St. the next stop.

Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring,

And the governor-general of Canada is Lord Byng

Whose ancestor was shot or hung,

I forget which, the good die young.

Here’s to your ripe old age,

Copyright, 1847, by Joseph Miner,

Entered according to act of Congress.

III

In the office of the librarian of Congress

America was discovered in 1492

This way out.

No, lady, you gotta change at Washington St. to the Everett train.

Out in the rain on the elevated

Crated, sated, all mismated.

Twelve seats on this bench,

How quaint.

In a shady nook, beside a brook, two lovers stroll along.

Express to Park Ave., Car Following.

No, we had it cleaned with the sand blast.

I know it ought to be torn down.

Before the bar of a saloon there stood a reckless crew,

When one said to another, “Jack, this message came for you.”

“It may be from a sweetheart, boys,” said someone in the crowd,

And here the words are missing... but Jack cried out aloud:

“It’s only a message from home, sweet home,

From loved ones down on the farm

Fond wife and mother, sister and brother...”

Bootleggers all and you’re another

In the shade of the old apple tree

’Neath the old cherry tree sweet Marie

The Conchologist’s First Book

By Edgar Allan Poe

Stubbed his toe

On a broken brick that didn’t show

Or a banana peel

In the fifth reel

By George Creel

It is to laugh

And quaff

It makes you stout and hale

And all my days I’ll sing the praise

Of Ivory Soap

Have you a little T. S. Eliot in your house?

IV

The stag at eve had drunk his fill

The thirsty hart look’d up the hill

And craned his neck just as a feeler

To advertise the Double-Dealer.

William Congreve was a gentleman

O art what sins are committed in thy name

For tawdry fame and fleeting flame

And everything, ain’t dat a shame?

Mah Creole Belle, ah lubs yo’ well;

Aroun’ mah heart you hab cast a spell

But I can’t learn to spell pseudocracy

Because there ain’t no such word.

And I says to Lizzie, if Joe was my feller

I’d teach him to go to dances with that

Rat, bat, cat, h,t, flat, plat, fat

Fry the fat, fat the fry

You’ll be a drug-store by and by.

Get the hook!

Above the lines of brooding hills

Rose spires that reeked of nameless ills,

And ghastly shone upon the sight

In ev’ry flash of lurid light

To be continued.

No smoking.

Smoking on four rear seats.

Fare win return to 5 cents after August 1st

Except outside the Cleveland city limits.

In the ghoul-haunted Woodland of Weir

Strangers pause to shed a tear;

Henry Fielding wrote “Tom Jones”

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

I saw the Leonard-Tendler fight

Farewell, farewell, O go to hell.

Nobody home

In the shantih.

* * *

This poem is a parody of T. S. Elliot’s The Waste Land, and mondernist poetry in general, which Lovecraft referred to as a “practically meaningless collection of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps in general.”