From The Love Letters of Phyllis McGinley.

Lines Scribbled on a Program

Whenever public speakers rise
 To dazzle hearers and beholders,
A film comes over both my eyes.
 Inevitably, toward my shoulders
I feel my head begin to sink.
It is an allergy, I think.

No matter what the time or place,
 No matter how adroit the speaker
Or rich the tone or famed the face,
 I feel my life force ebbing weaker.
Even the chairman, lauding him,
Can make the room about me swim.

The room swims. And my palms are wet.
 Languor and lassitude undo me.
I fumble with a cigarette
 For ashtrays never handy to me,
Lift chin, grit teeth, shift in my chair,
But nothing helps — not even prayer.

From all who Talk, I dream away —
 From statesmen heavy with their travels,
From presidents of P.T.A.
 Exchanging honorary gavels;
From prelate, pedant, wit, and clown,
Club treasurer, John Mason Brown;

From lecturers on the ductless gland,
 Ex-Communists, ex-dukes, exhorters,
Poets with poems done by hand,
 Political ladies, lady reporters,
Professors armed with bell and book,
Mimes, magnates, mayors, Alistair Cooke.

The hot, the fluent, and the wise,
 The dull, the quick-upon-the-trigger —
Alike, alike they close my eyes.
 Alike they rob me of my vigor.
For me Demosthenes, with pain,
Had mouthed his Attic stones in vain.

The aforementioned being clear
 Concerning speech, concerning speaker,
Alas, what am I doing here,
 Facing my empty plate and beaker,
And watching with a wild unrest
The rising of the evening’s Guest?
Ah, was it mine, this monstrous choice?
Whose accents these? And whose the voice
That wakes in me a pang well known?

Good God, it is my own, my own!