(With apologies to the late Stephen Vincent Benét)
We thought it was a Joke
When we read it in the papers that afternoon—
About some nut inventor down in Georgia
With a device for printing matter on air.
No, it wasn’t skywriting again,
Or television. It printed matter on the air for you to read:
It was permanent
And wouldn’t blow away.
But there it was.
Just an item in the paper. It didn’t mean much.
Something to laugh about, or tell your wife,
“What will these guys think of next?”
And most people didn’t even see it, I suppose.
That’s why it came as such a shock
When the advertisers took it up.
I remember the morning
When I looked out of the window and saw the sign hanging there
(Just hanging there, you understand, in bold black letters)
Reading:
“HAVE YOU TAKEN A GOOD LAXATIVE LATELY, OLD TIMER?”
I know I blinked.
The letters were black as ink, but solid to the touch:
They hung there and they didn’t go away.
Well, this was how it started - and on the streets, going to work,
There were more signs to read.
“EAT REEKIES - THEY’RE GOOD FOR YOU!”
“HAVE YOU HAD YOUR WINTER FUR RELINED?”
and
“GET YOUR CRANKCASE DRAINED.”
Passengers puzzled on the bus, but we weren’t sore, then.
The signs were small at first;
Just two feet high, black and white - “POOPSI-COLA HITS THE SPOT.”
After while we noticed the men with spray guns
Like insect exterminators, spraying the letters out.
Little crowds used to watch them do it.
And the TV comedians made gags,
And the columnists filled their columns,
And somebody wrote a song about it.
But nobody wrote indignant letters to the newspapers
Yet
Then they began spraying signs over the lawns
And over driveways
And above houses
And the streets were choked with signs, signs, signs.
Black specks of printed matter, wherever your eyes turned.
Advertising firms were sued by property owners,
But the air was free. Wasn’t it?
The courts thought so.
Motorists complained the signs blocked visibility.
There were accidents.
Men were killed, but the ads went on.
To sell more bread.
To sell more tonics to help digest the bread.
To sell more laxatives to get rid of the bread
Once it was digested.
And then, of course - they advertised more bread again.
That’s how it was, and we might have gotten used to it, in time
If only the signs hadn’t started getting BIGGER
And THICKER.
Two feet tall in the air.
Then five feet.
Then ten.
And the letters a foot thick.
The air was black. Foul.
There was some secret ink they used, and when you breathed it,
It made you retch.
But that was all right, too.
One of the signs said “USE FLETCH’S PILLS AND STOP RETCHING.”
There was a cure
But not for blindness, not for insanity,
Not for the perpetual sight of signs
Floating over Broadway and Park Avenue.
Twisting between clotheslines in the slums,
Weaving across the swimming pools on palatial estates.
Blocking the boulevards
Shadowing the sun in a black blot over the city—
The signs, reading, “TENDER SKIN LIKES VELVY-DOWN TISSUE,”
“EAT MORE KOHLRABI WEEK,”
“GET RID OF YOUR UGLY PIMPLES!” and “THROW AWAY YOUR TRUSS!”
And then they made the signs in color to light up the night,
And blindness and insanity began to pile up vital statistics.
Regular advertising died
Because this was cheaper and more profitable.
What if the signs did tangle up in streaming criss-crosses?
What if you looked out of the window and saw nothing but reams of it,
Illegibly imprinted on air?
They got the insects to work, then.
Inoculated them, I suppose. Trained them, perhaps
To void out the signs.
No more sprayers.
Insect thoraxes spewed out the signs in patterns.
They must have bred the bugs on Madison Avenue.
Some genius thought it up—
The Man in the Gray Flannel Overalls.
Of course we tried to pass some laws.
We always do, when it’s too late,
And it was too late now.
There were insects everywhere. Insects in clouds,
Insects in black swarms, spurting from distended bellies;
Each forming his little letter - its dot, his dash, her period.
And that, of course, was the beginning
Of the end.
Too many insects.
Too many to train, too many to control. So they bred.
Bred, and flew, and devoured.
They made nests in crates of VELVY-DOWN. They nibbled at the trusses.
They bored through boxes of FLETCH’S PILLS.
It didn’t do any good to reline your winter furs.
They ate them, too,
And bred again.
The skies were really black now. Black with flying forms.
It was too late.
The plague came, and then the famine.
They called out the Marines.
But how are you going to bayonet an insect?
And pretty soon,
What with plague and famine and all,
There weren’t any Marines any more.
There weren’t any consumer goods left to consume,
Nor any consumers.
And - belated blessing! - there weren’t any advertisers either.
Just the insects
Flying aimlessly through ink-spattered air, droning by the signs
Made meaningless through lack of eyes to read them. And insect retinas
Flickered down on an empty world where there was nothing left
But words.
Lucky for me
I saved a few to write this down....