Carl Rakosi

There is the mordant voice from the back alleys of Paris, Villon with Diogenes in his eye,

and Robin Starveling, the tailor (he goes with my proletarian bent)

and Tom Snout, the tinker (he goes with my ironic nature although Francis Flute, the bellows-mender is more fanciful),

and the voice of the young wife explaining to her close friend why she had chosen this man for a husband:...

Quips is dressed like a clown. He holds a bicycle horn in his hand that farts when he squeezes it and he has a bright red bulb on his nose.

Quack, his partner, is dressed similarly.

Quack: ‘There’s talk in Washington that we may be going to war.’

Quips: ‘I know how to stop it.’

Quack: ‘How?’

Quips: ‘For starters ....

Attention, motorists! The flag of the School Patrol is down. Stop!

and let the little shavers pour out under the benign smile of the driver,

every one in double file, the eye of the teacher shepherding them,

their little voices chattering away. a criss-cross babble. How happy can you be?

There will be ice cream for everyone. Make way, let them cross the street

and after them the...

‘Tell me, where does fancy breed?’ In the calyx of the crocus in the springtime, a merry time when the spirit bounds like a feather.

And a goatherd, two miles out of Oaxaca, with his flock browsing ahead of him, approached me and hesitantly, as a simple man with one more learned, asked, ‘What’s it like, Señor, in the city?’

And tell me, where does fancy lie?...