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Which decided it was time to register for the July elections.
Whenever I get to thumbing through my accumulation of A. J. papers – and they’re always accumulating because my desire to read is now about two years ahead of my time to read – I think
a. What a wonderful conglomeration of people, ideas, and styles of printing there are in N.A.P.A. Something for every taste. Why doesn’t everybody belong?
b. I ought to write to people whose opinions agree with mine and tell them how astute they are. I ought to write to people whose opinions don’t agree with mine and tell them how wrong they are. I ought to write to the people who write well and tell them I admire them. I don’t always do what I ought to do. Probably I’ll never change, alas!
c. I am all in favor of five dollar dues, no strings attached. Those healthy bundles I am behind with on my reading of seem to prove we don’t need a mailing subsidy.
d. I am Louise Lincoln Columbus, Ohio.
Now that spring is back and the birds with it, it seems fitting to devote the rest of this issue to a theme which arouses in me periodically a murderous rage: the case of the early bird, suburban style. He doesn’t have to get some farmer up to milk the cows, slop the hogs, feed the chickens, and plow the north forty before breakfast. He just likes to waken people. Maybe he does feel fine because it is a new day and he cannot read the paper or listen to the radio or watch T.V., so he figures it is a good day and everybody should rise and welcome it with him.
Well
I.
The birdies rise at five ayem
And sing a noisy note.
These early birdies get the worms
And likewise get my goat.
It’s time they stopped to realize
I ain’t a bird that likes to rise.
II. The First Day of Spring
The time has come when nights grow short,
And with the early dawn
A robin rouses from a tree
To turn his larynx on.
Now songs which charm a poet’s soul
At golden noonday heard,
Can but bestir the sleepers wrath
Who’s wakened by a bird.
Which proves anew, good’s not innate
But joined with many links
To time and place and passing mood,
Divorced from which, it stinks.
III. Studies in Frustration
I never really cared for clocks
Whose shrill alarms are heard,
But even less I like that pest,
The loud-mouthed early bird.
The reason why I deeply hate him,
Is lack of power to regulate him.
My clock I set for six ayem.
The bird goes off at dawn.
I hush the raucous voice of clock:
The bird rings on and on,
And mocks the atom splitting race
That cannot put him in his place.
IV. Re Dictators
I go to bed now with the birds;
I have no other choices
Since I am awakened at the dawn
By all their high-pitched voices.
Ah, life is full of grief and pain
When ordered by a bird-sized brain.
V. (in case you can stand one more)
There’s one in every patch of wood,
There’s one in every neighborhood;
That egophile, the early bird,
Who’s very sure he should be heard
At four ayem or thereabouts.
He does not sing, he brags, he shouts,
“Oh Morn that wakes, ‘tis I who woke you!
Oh Dawn that breaks, ‘tis I who broke you!”
Oh bird, thrice damned, ‘tis I invoke you:
Be still, be gone, before I choke you!
A. Walrus
Editor, Dept. of Utter Nonsense
Printed in Cranford by Alf Babcock,
who’s done it before and still
is willing to do it again