Ernest M. Hemingway

In the rain in the rain in the rain in the rain in Spain. Does it rain in Spain? Oh yes my dear on the contrary and there are no bull fights. The dancers dance in long white pants It isn’t right to yence your aunts Come Uncle, let’s go home. Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. Come let us fart in the home. There is no art in a fart. Still a fart may not be artless. Let us fart an artless fart in the home. Democracy. Democracy. Bill says democracy must go. Go democracy. Go Go Go Bill’s father would never knowingly sit down at table with a Democrat. Now Bill says democracy must go. Go on democracy. Democracy is the shit. Relativity is the shit. Dictators are the shit. Menken is the shit. Waldo Frank is the shit. The Broom is the shit. Dada is the shit. Dempsey is the shit. This is not a complete list. They say Ezra is the shit. But Ezra is nice. Come let us build a monument to Ezra. Good a very nice monument. You did that nicely Can you do another? Let me try and do one. Let us all try and do one. Let the little girl over there on the corner try and do one. Come on little girl. Do one for Ezra. Good. You have all been successful children. Now let us clean the mess up. The Dial does a monument to Proust. We have done a monument to Ezra. A monument is a monument. After all it is the spirit of the thing that counts.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want him for long.

There are never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows No successful suicides. A Chinese boy kills himself and is dead. (they continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome) A Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead. (no one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone) They find a model dead alone in bed and very dead. (it made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge) Sweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water, soap suds and stomach pumps rescue the people one knows. Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.

For we have thought the longer thoughts And gone the shorter way. And we have danced to devils’ tunes, Shivering home to pray; To serve one master in the night, Another in the day.

Soldiers never do die well; Crosses mark the places— Wooden crosses where they fell, Stuck above their faces. Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch— All the world roars red and black; Soldiers smother in a ditch, Choking through the whole attack.

A porcupine skin, Stiff with bad tanning, It must have ended somewhere. Stuffed horned owl Pompous Yellow eyed; Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig Sooted with dust. Piles of old magazines, Drawers of boy’s letters And the line of love They must have ended somewhere. Yesterday’s Tribune is gone Along with youth And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach The year of the big storm When the hotel burned down At Seney, Michigan.

The age demanded that we sing And cut away our tongue. The age demanded that we flow And hammered in the bung. The age demanded that we dance And jammed us into iron pants. And in the end the age was handed The sort of shit that it demanded.