From Morris Bishop’s Spilt Milk.

Look Us Over, Posterity

Historians dealing with Mary of Scots
 Grieve and deplore, as is customary,
The lack of materials touching her plots;
 We cannot be sure if we’re just to Mary.

The documents’ dearth, it is commonly said,
 Interferes with the proper commemorating
Of Cheops, Columbus, and Eric the Red;
 It’s a troublesome task to give them a rating.

But the present is aiding the future, at last,
 With newsreels and libraries, fortunately;
Now every suburbanite writes of his past
 In the long afternoons on his porch in Nutley.

The Times has its copies imprinted on rag,
 And no corner-stone is impenetrable
To him who would learn how we blab or we brag
 Of society’s shame and our Senate trouble.

We leave to posterity treasures of facts
 To resolve all the legends that grow about us,
And the richest equipment to study our acts —
 But what if it won’t want to know about us?

It Rolls On

This is the time of wonder, it is written;
 Man has attained the ultimate mysteries.
 (We turn from the Chrysler Tower to watch a kitten,
 Turn to a dead fish from Isocrates;
Men on great liners drink but to be smitten
 With coma, on the subjugated seas;
 Einstein is even more dull than Bulwer Lytton;
 There’s no sweet influence of the Pleiades.)
Science no longer knows the verb-form “can’t”;
 Our cars will soon be powered by radio;
 Scholars are harnessing the urgent ant
And making monstrous bastard fruits to grow,
 Building machines for things I do not want,
 Discovering truths I do not care to know.