WHITE-OUT

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24624, 21 July 1945, Page 6

WHITE-OUT

—♦ — (By WHIM WHAM) I feel I know Rather More about Snow Than a Week ago, After the first fanciful Wonder At the Disappearance of Everything under What sensitive Journalists call A White Mantle, after All The aesthetic and other ■ unpractical Reactions To the obvious Attractions— The complete White-out Blotting right out Streets, Pavements, Roofs, Chimneypots, Ana the numberless suburban Graveyard garden Plots, Rose-beds, Bird Baths, etcetera, that mark The Eighth-acre pretending to be a Park, All blanketed, obliterated, In one impaitial Beauty aggregated That wins no Beautifying Society Prizes For Snowdrifts of varying Light and various Sizes. After all That, and More— Pulling oft Gumboots at the Door, Feeling Feet freeze in It, Ploughing half up to the Knees in It, Scraping in It, shovelling in It, Capering, capsizing, and grovelling in Every Step outdoors being a Sort Of impromptu Winter Sport; And now, the Thaw, the spoiled Illusion, the soiled Sugar-like Stacks, Slush Tracks, The Snow Men drunkenly And shrunkenly Propped; The sopped Streets show, The slow Roof Glacier slips And drips; A City cleanly palled , Bepomes Piebald; The bridelike Beauty drags Its slattern Rags In Aftermath of fatuous Woe, The unromantic Suburbs thinking, Oh If Snow Would only go As decorously as It arrives And leave on Paths, Roads, Gardens, Drives, A little Less Messl