Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CITIZEN DREAMING, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CITIZEN DREAMING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the blue hour
Last Line: And the lucky dead on all the roads that led from home to here!
Subject(s): Crime & Criminals; Fascism & Fascists; Politics & Government; United States; America


In the blue hour
When the houses fall asleep in their shadows
(Before the impersonal light in the hungry streets
Glamors one more evening)
Then, in one of the mean rooms,
The Citizen makes soup.
On the forbidden hot-plate,
Or, on the forbidden electric fry-pan
(The gift of a grandchild)
Fabricates a sandwich from prefabricated
Processed cheese-type food-type -- American type -- cheese --
Or opens the innocent-looking can of beans.
The Citizen is dining at home alone in the blue hour.

And now as the darkness distributes crime
Unequally in the streets of the rich and the poor,
The Citizen reviews the day and the days:
The excitements and astonishments of the new age!
The excitement of another rent raise on the room!
The enlightening cut-back in social benefits
By the Presidential thief the Citizen elected!
And the one bar the Citizen could walk to:
closing;
The store that once gave credit:
Gone out of business;
The last movie house the Citizen could get to:
Bankrupt.
And everyone, it seems,
Disappearing:
The children gone impossible distances, the grandchildren
Unknown, unseen . . .

In the blue hour a little light enters.
What was hidden becomes almost
Visible
The opaque
Clears a little
Now that the Citizen has stopped voting for those frauds
(Great heroes once!)
Who have put the Citizen here --
(What was it that a father or mother said?)
Now that it is too late
And the Citizen is as abandoned
As those the Citizen abandoned
Once
Despised
For class or color --
Now all can be seen at last clearly!

Now, in the blue hour the Citizen indulges
In criminal dreams:
A warm place, good food, sex, freedom --
Now that all desires could end only
In the choice of illegal means.

Something human is elected out of the light . . .
In the blue hour.
And the lucky dead on all the roads that led from home to here!


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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