ConWatch: Week 1,803
Does Germany have a constitution yet?
Over here in Europe
From the land of Ford,
you send us a pretty lousy human export:
Paris and Greece are overrun by your mediocre middle class,
These tourists, loud and turgid,
are spiritually putting their feet on the table,
showing up irksome everywhere;
and every second sentence begins with the words:
"Over there in America ..."
Over there in America there are two kinds of law
(for poor and rich) — there is good and bad;
there are those and these: Lewis and Mencken,
and dollar-chasers, thinking in dollars.
Over there in America there are Republicans
and utterly judgmental Puritans.
You have strength, youth, and silver —
but you are not the measure of all things,
over there in America.
Over here in Europe, the woman
is not a harem-wife without lower body —
over here in Europe, black skin is
not leprosy for which extra train cars are built;
over here in Europe, you can be without money
and still, still exist in the world —
over here in Europe, you can get by
without Sunday school,
because nearly no one stands at the altar:
a grumbling, sobering reality —
like over there in America.
Of course, the good ones among you know this
very well. The rest have no clue about
pomp and fanfare, hearing only the flattering echo
of their newspapers; feeling so first class ...
Pay no heed, working man. Let them go,
the bourgeois vanities.
Papers, flags, und parades
are laughable cement facades ...
For the true border, between takers and makers,
runs right through all nations —
over there in America.
Just like over here in Europe.