MOURNING’S AT EIGHT-THIRTY

Or, A Headline a Day Keeps Euphoria Away

Phyllis McGinley

Solo 1: ‘Tis day, I waken, full of cheer,

And cast the nightmare’s shackle.

Hark, hark! the sanguine lark I hear

Or possibly the grackle.

Phoebus arises, So do I;

Then, tuneful from the shower,

Descend with head and courage high

To greet the breakfast hour.

All’s well with all my world. I seem

A mover and a shaper

Till from the doorstep with the cream

I fetch the morning paper---

Till I fetch in the paper and my hopes begin to bleed.

All: There’s a famine on the Danube, there’s a crisis on

the Tweed,

Solo 1: And the foes of peace are clever,

And my bonds no good whatever,

And I wish I had never

Learned to read.

All: The coffee curdling in her cup

Turns bitterer than tonic

For stocks are down and steaks are up

And planes are supersonic

Crops fail. Trains crash. The outlook’s bright

For none except the coffiner,

While empires topple left and right,

Though Leftward rather oftener,

Solo 1: And Russia will not come to terms,

And Sikhs are full of passion,

And each advertisement affirms

My wardrobe’s out of fashion.

Oh I see by the papers we are dying by degrees.

All: There’s a war upon our border, there’s a blight

upon our trees;

And to match each Wonder Drug up

That oru scientist have dug up,

They have also turned the bug up

Of a painful new disease.

Solo 1: At eventide the journals face

In happier directions.

They like a juicy murder case,

The dote on comic sections.

But in the morning even “Books”

Sends shudders coursing through me.

The outlook for the Drama looks

Intolerably gloomy,

And though the sun with all his heart

Is shining round my shoulder,

I notice by the weather chart

Tomorrow will be colder

Oh, I wake in the dawning and my dreams are rosy-red,

But the papers all assure me there’s destruction

straight ahead.

All: If the present’s pretty dismal,

Why, the future’s quite abysmal,

Solo 1: And I think that I’ll just

crawl

back

to

bed.