Being Jim Davis

Calmly we walk through this April’s day,   Metropolitan poetry here and there,   In the park sit pauper and rentier,   The screaming children, the motor-car   Fugitive about us, running away,   Between the worker and the millionaire   Number provides all distances,   It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,   Many great dears are taken away,   What will become of you and me (This is the school in which we learn ...)   Besides the photo and the memory? (... that time is the fire in which we burn.) (This is the school in which we learn ...)   What is the self amid this blaze? What am I now that I was then Which I shall suffer and act again, The theodicy I wrote in my high school days   Restored all life from infancy, The children shouting are bright as they run   (This is the school in which they learn ...)   Ravished entirely in their passing play! (.