CARMEN SAECVLARE

(With apologies to Betjeman, Slough, and John Shade)

The great charade is over now;
What will we do, and whence and how
Bestir ourselves? O, take a bow,
Thou man from Queens!

We’ll miss you, though we won’t know why.
Sharply awake at three, we’ll try
To think: What stirred me? By and by
The lurid scenes

You played for us will come to mind;
Dismayed in wee-hours dark, we’ll find
We needed you; you were the kind
Of loathesome schmuck

We all could hate as one; but now
We’re blued, tattoo’d and screwed, and how!
What’s coming, none could disavow
Would surely suck,

And yet we sought it. Can’t complain,
Luxuriate in shared disdain,
Clutch pearls no more. The squalid train
Of Bidenites –

They’re what we asked for, what we got.
As the man said, they’ve not forgot
Nor learned, it’s clear; nor we, a lot.
Th’ exciting rites –

Campaigning, voting, polls; that crap —
Now show, in retrospect, a trap.
We took the bait, we heard the snap
Too late; the jaws

Closed on our foot, and now we’re caught.
You’d think Experience might have taught
Us better; could we not have thought
The iron laws

Still unsuspended? Lesser evil
(O mortal enemy primeval)
As usual, a venom’d weevil
Gnawing our brain.

So here’s to four lean years, at least
For most of us, though some will feast;
And in the belly of the beast
Still we remain.