AT THE BOTTOM OF A SUITCASE

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31316, 11 March 1967, Page 12

AT THE BOTTOM OF A SUITCASE

(Bp

WHIM WHAM)

Just home from Overseas, Sir, do YOU find Oddments you might as well have left Behind Scattered about your Baggage—and your Mind? A sort of Travel Dust or litter, You Don’t really stick to IT, it sticks to You. ♦ * * In the Neighbourhood of Washington Square The Girls’ Skirts and the Boys’ Hair Are exactly the Length that Ours prefer, Who says we’re a Backward Nation, Sir? ♦ ♦ * Too late now, but isn’t it a Pity They squeezed the United Nations into New York City? In Moscow, Washington or Wellington it would have been So much more CENTRAL, if you see What I mean? In Manhattan, in the Bowery (or Bouwerie) There aren’t any Totara or Kauri. Big City Pumice Country this, where Sky Scrapers don’t grow much above Scrub-high. Still McSorley’s Old Ale House has been There Since 1860, and if You happen to care For GOOD ALE, RAW ONIONS AND NO LADIES, these May add to the Body’s Comfort and the Mind’s Ease: There is Sawdust on McSorley’s Old Floor And on the Fur of McSorley’s Old Cats there is More, Old Hands drop Salt in their Beer and the Coke glows In the free-standing Stove, while it snows In the Street and on Those who beg in the Street, In the Bowery are Some who are so dead, dead Beat They couldn’t buy a Beer or even a Bite to eat The Rare Books at Yale, New Haven, Conn., Are housed in a Gargantuan Ark Of air-conditioned marble, poised upon Pinpoints of Steel: no Speck or Spark Should ever touch the Treasures there Entombed, because They are so rare. (THEORETICALLY, said the Librarian, there is

no DUST) In this Building—betraying rather less Trust In the ultimate Triumph of Theory over Time Than did W. Shakespeare in his ‘powerful Rhyme’!