From Phyllis McGinley’s A Pocketful of Wry.

Millennium

Some day,
Some blank, odd, pallid, immemorial day,
Some curious Monday,
Some Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Or even Sunday,
I shall arise dishevelled and a gaper,
To scan the paper
And stare thereon, thumb through, search it for clues,
Peruse and re-peruse,
And find no news.

Nothing to heat the blood or race the pulse,
Nothing at all —
No six-inch headlines screaming a war’s results
Or a city’s fall.
No threats, no bombs, no air-raids, no alarms,
No feats of arms,
No foe at any gate,
No politics, no shouting candidate;
Nothing exclusive, not a censored phrase,
No Scoops, no Exposés;
No crisis either foreign or domestic,
Nothing wild, urgent, imminent or drastic
Happening on the earth.

Only reports of weather and the birth
Of triplets to a lioness at the Zoo,
(Printed within a box)
And yesterday’s sermons seeming scarcely new
And something about the White-or-Sundry-Sox;
An actress married or divorced or dead,
Who led
The golfing in some tournament or other.

Oh, I shall smother
In ennui, I shall nod and yawn
And fling the dull sheets down upon the lawn,
Bored near to death by what they have to say
On that strange, beautiful day.