iamnor

being a pottle of noats & curioSitys for GenTlEmen & laDys of judgMINT

I Nor wipe my Pen on my Coat & let fly like a Goose in a gale, & if PunctuAtion be wanTin, blame not me but the Moon, for she pulleth the tide of Commas.

In JANuary 20 day, the great whirliGIG turnt agayn & the MACE of state did knock at the door of Mr. TRUMP, who stept in for a SECOND spell, as if Grover Cleaveland had left him a spare Key in the Umbreller stand; the Oath was spake, the bands did toot, the snow made a Nose of every Senator, & the new PREZ done a stack of paPERS with his name as big as a Church sign; straight off he throws a blanKET of Clemency over a shore full of JAN-Six folks, a mighty heap in number (fifteene HUNdred by reckonin) & some commutings besides, which set the tongues clackin from Georgetown to Goose-Creek.

Now to the COIN-Room, where the Price-Imps skipp about on little hoofs; the Bureau fellows made their Figgurs & found the basket of All-Things dearer by something like near three per Cents in the twelve months to August, core a Button higher yet, which made shopkeepers grin like cats & housewives frown like ministers; the Fed Lords, in high collars & keen eye, mutter’d the Rate be ‘just so’ not too warm, not too cold, like porridge fit for a halfway bear & some would CUT, some would NOT, & all feared the Spirit of InflayShun rising by the chimbley again.

But lo! in the leaf-fall Month of OCTOber the great brass Clock of Govern-mint stopp’d its tick for want of the AppropriaShun Winder key; clerks were sent home to count ceiling cracks, & the COLA reckoning for old soldiers & gray-haired pensioners got stuck in the pipe like a too-bold cork, for the Stats were not printed nor the CPI goose plucked, so the check-books waited like widows at a wharf.

The Weather then, being as modern as a Steam-angel & twice as cross; JUNE ran hot as a frying-pan seventh warmest by the record-book making the plains hum & the coasts pant; by Summer’s middle the WEST took fire as usual, but more so, with many a county smoked like a ham, & the tallies of burn’d acres & scortch’d barns went up like a kite, while the fire-brigades fought as if swatting hornets with wet blankets; the National Fire men writ their tables of tens of thousands of fires & millions of acres, which is more Land than a Duke could dream; in CALI-forny the ledgers carried sorrow fatalities counted, sheds & homesteads turned to powdered brick.

The Sea-Wizards at NOAH (a merry name for Rain-Prophets) foretold a busy storm-parade in the ATLANtick many a Name’d whirly-gig marching up like soldiers & Mariners nailed their shutters tight & prayed their boats would sit still like good dogs; whether every cloud kept its promise or not, the coastwise prudence was counted a virtue, as ever.

SPACE being the new pasture where rich men drive their thunder-carts, the Texian sands saw STARSHIP leap & belly-flop & leap again ten times by the dog-days count with the FAA blowing its whistles & waving green kerchiefs at intervals; some flights kiss’d the sky with success, others fell to learning like schoolboys with bruised knees; meanwhile NASA’s Moon-chariot ARTEMIS the Second had her calendar slid forward, not for this Spring nor next harvest, but to APRIL of twenty-Six if Providence smile, the parts being screwed & tested by careful hands that fear both vacuum & Congress.

In the Theater of GAMES, where men in helmets write Homer with their shoulders, the PHILA-DELPHY EAGLES flew like green thunder & peck’d the CHIEFS of KANSAS, forty to twenty-two, putting to bed all talk of a triple crown, & Broad Street turn’d into a brass band with wheels; come JUNE the round-ball Lords crowned the OKLAHOMA THUNDER at last, their guard SIR SHAI (a Canadian by birth but an American of applause) gathering the Most Valuable Laurel, & the marketeers did say his purse strings grew stout as a ship’s rope; as for base-ball, when the leaves reddened the scribes still argued which nine would sip October’s sweetest cider, the bracket hot as a stove.

In the Courts of last resort the Robe-men, being nine in number & equal to a Hydra in attention, poured out their flask of Opinions through the Term, many touching the powers of states & the reach of speech, some from the Fifth Circuit, some from the Fourth, & Governors took notes as if copying a Psalme; what each Decree doth portend shall be argued by pamphleteers till the Sun freezes, yet every Statehouse felt the tremor.

Thus stood the UNION in the Year of our noise TWENTY-TWENTY-FIVE: a Nation half marching, half mud-stuck; with pardons like hailstones, prices like uncertain cats, a shutter’d Treasury for a spell, fires like red sermons, storms rehearsing their alphabett, rockets leaping like salmon, & champions crowned under lights bright as new stars. If you ask me, Lord TIMOTHY DEXTER’s ghost of Newbury-port (who once sold warming-pans to the Indies & made a fortune cooling the Tropick with common sense), I say America is a Whale-ship she lists, she creaks, she argues with her own echo yet she keeps her prow to the blue, & the harpoon line is stout, & the crew quarrel at supper but pull together at dawn. GOD save the UNITED STETS & send her more Wisdom than Ink.