486 - The Pharaoh & Against the Odds & The Dinosaur

The Pharaoh
By Harold McCurdy

Not since Tutankhamen have rulers been
So gold of face or half so nearly God.
His Theban tomb decays, but slowly. Plod
Past the Aswan Dam up to it, or remain
In Washington or Chicago till you've seen
The resurrected Pharaoh with his rod
Of power and immortality probe and prod
The democratic sheep. His royal mien,
Young as it is, and was, restores a time
When time was timeless, and no future could
Unseat earth's Amen-Ra or dare to raise
The sheep above their shepherd. Multitudes
Have flocked to admire a pastor still sublime,
Numbed by his golden mask and great-eyed gaze.

Harold McCurdy is Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In recent years, his hobby and avocation have issued in a series of poems, several of which are in book form and one of which, "Four for a Feast," appeared in our July 1981 issue. The three poems printed here, "The Pharaoh," "Against the Odds," and "The Dinosaur," all point to specific references which the reader will easily identify.

487 - The Pharaoh & Against the Odds & The Dinosaur

Against the Odds
(Thanks to the TV series, "The Long Search")

Wing above wing above wing
Rainbow-tipped and burning,
The angels of Roumania
(As the Orthodox churches show)
Stoop to receive the souls
Of those released by death
From Industrial Communism.
In Bucharest, "City of Joy,"
There is still baptism,
And out in the country among
Sheep and plough-horses
The people are faithful, the ikons
Of Virgin and Saint saluted
Devoutly, and the bishop
Pacing through old villages,
Black-robed, black-mitred, black-bearded,
Is sure of their "Risen indeed"
In response to his "Christ is risen!"
(That's the Greek of St. Mark,
Not Marx.) Bucharest's where
The wheat will be sifted. There
The tall dividing walls
Are going up, the tractors
Are fanning out from the City's
Modern assembly-lines
Into the traditional fields
Of Moldavia, blitzkrieging
The cows, the daisies, the serious
Human faces, capable
Of real sorrow, real joy; not chic
As in a TV commercial,
Or, alternatively, brutal,
Dedicated to celebrating
The Gross National Product
Or the success of a Five-Year Plan.
What can one on the sidelines do?
What can one do? I pray
That the Divine Mercy may forgive
The propagandists of Progress,
The technologists, the bureaucrats.
And I lay
My sagging American dollars
On the serious human faces.

488 - The Pharaoh & Against the Odds & The Dinosaur

The Dinosaur

There was this venerable dinosaur, a monster,
Megalopodian, armor-plated, breathing
Indubitable radioactive fallout. His tread
Shook the whole earth, left the lakes seething.

He was well represented in Congress.
From his stables in the hollowed-out Western Preserves
He was in daily electronic communication
With the Appropriations Committees of both Houses.

His pen-pal and playmate across the Great Waters
Suffered from echopraxia. and echolalia:
Whenever he put forward a right foot, his playmate put forward a left;
Whenever he wrote a threatening letter in 10-point Italic, his pen-pal
repeated the threat in 16-point Cyrillic.

Between the two, the white-haired and voluble orators
Of the three branches of the Federal Government
Argued like hostages of a belligerent constituency
Always in favor of a richer diet and enlarged playing fields for their
megalopod.

Result: crowded living conditions for the rest of the population;
Pathetic little demonstrations against nuclear power plants
Regularly put down by tear-gas and billy clubs and a few random
bursts of machine-gun fire;
Racial unrest; sillier and sillier TV shows; plans to colonize remote
planets.

The good old dinosaur, not in the least ruffled,
But drawing a magic pentagram like a wall around him,
Curled up to sleep it off-dreaming of
First-strike capabilities, and galactic conquests.