Classic Poem

Buzzing autos, like black bees,
Like black bees,
Hurried through the magnolia trees,
Then billboards, to make nations store,
Come in the vision flashy and vain,
Washed by the midnight sea-born rain,
Washed by the midnight sea-born rain.
They went like cliffs up to the sky,
America's glories flaming high,
Festooned cartoons, an amazing mixture,
Shabby, shoddy, perverse and twistical,
Shamefully boastful,
Shyly mystical.
Politics, with all its tricks, both old parties in a fix!
Donkey and elephant short of breath.
La Follette scorning them half to death.

The snappy Saturday Evening Post
Displaying, and advertising most
The noisiest things from coast to coast.
Exaggerated Sunday papers,
Comic sheets like scrambled eggs,
And Andy Gump's first-reader capers,
All on those billboards to the sky.
Who put them there, in the way, and why?
Pictured skyscrapers of the night,
Marble-topped, tremendous, white!
There were Arrow-collar heroes proud,
Holding their heads above the crowd,
Looking for love like honeycomb.
There was many an ice-cream vendor,
There were business kings in a daisy chain,
Then movie queens in a daisy chain,
Sugar-faced, unlaced and slender, dreaming of love like honeycomb.

Then all the rascals of the land,
All the damned for the last ten years,
Rising from their doom with tears,
Skeletons, skeletons, leather and bone,
Each dead soul chained to a saxaphone —
Watching the roaring storm above,
Looking for honey-dreams and love.
All on those billboards to the sky,
Who put them there, in the way, and why?

Then a railroad map of the U. S. A.
Then a soul-road map of the U. S. A.
Showing all the flowers of the land,
But nowhere, love like honeycomb.
Only signboards, only billboards,
Washed by the midnight sea-born rain,
Washed by the midnight sea-born rain.