A few centuries will pass and vanish

A few centuries will pass and vanish Into Lethe, under the crushing weight of daily grind. The soirée will give way to the society rout. And washing machines get swapped for washtubs. What's needed will climb higher on the list. Whoever matters will suddenly be forgiven. Stitching up suit after suit will become low. Libertad will be granted to the prisoners. News from the Thames, the Rhine or the Seine Will suddenly converge on glossy covers. Their readers won't do time for treason, For ideas from a foreigner's lips. Tractors, in tribute to a bygone era, After long battles for the harvest, Scoring four-of-a-kind instead of a five-year plan, Will carry through the towns of Mother Volga The news that the world has become the same As it was a century and a half ago. And He which art in heaven Will set everything back in order anew. A horse trudges across the field at dawn, Beside it a ploughman presses the plough into the earth. A wife spreads the magic self-laying tablecloth. All at work — nature quietly harkens To the kilojoules that muscle gives birth to In the symbiosis of fauna and flora. The world is made by an invisible corpuscle Until somebody draws the curtains…