My Virtual Reading Room

Mourning's at Eight-Thirty

OR, A HEADLINE A DAY KEEPS EUPHORIA AWAY

'Tis day. I waken, full of cheer,
And cast the nightmare's shackle.
Hark, hark! the sanguine lark I hear
Or possibly the grackle.

Phoebus arises. So do I;
Then, tuneful from the shower,
Descend with head and courage high
To greet the breakfast hour.

All's well with my new world. I seem
A mover and a shaper
Till from the doorstep with the cream
I fetch the morning paper--

Till I fetch in the paper and my hopes begin to bleed.
There's a famine on the Danube, there's a crisis on the Tweed.
And the foes of peace are clever,
And my bonds no good whatever,
And I wish that I had never
Learned to read.

The coffee curdling in my cup
Turns bitterer than tonic,
For stocks are down and steaks are up
And planes are supersonic.

Crops fail. Trains crash. The outlook's bright
For none except the coffiner,
While empires topple left and right,
Though Leftward rather oftener,

And Russia will not come to terms,
And Sikhs are full of passion,
And each advertisement affirms
My wardrobe's out of fashion.

Oh, I see by the papers we are dying by degrees.
There's a war upon our border, there's a blight upon our trees;
And to match each Wonder Drug up
That our scientists have dug up,
They have also turned the bug up
Of a painful new disease.

At eventide the journals face
In happier directions.
They like a juicy murder case,
They dote on comic sections.

But in the morning even "Books"
Sends shudders coursing through me.
The outlook for Drama looks
Intolerably gloomy,

And though the sun with all his heart
Is shining round my shoulder,
I notice by the weather chart
Tomorrow will be colder.

Oh, I wake in the dawning and my dreams are rosy-red,
But the papers all assure me there's destruction straight ahead.
If the present's pretty dismal,
Why, the future's quite abysmal,
And I think that I'll just
                                       crawl
                                                 back
                                                             to
                                                                   bed.

(Phyllis McGinley)