It was in a little backward country known as Backward Country
That nestled (that was one of its troubles; it nestled)
Between the Advanced Iron Works and the Lesser Spaceport—
It was was on Wisdom Day in B.C. (which was a national holiday in B.C.)
(As well as the Royal Philosopher’s birthday)
That the Royal Philosopher himself rolled from his cave
At high noon,
And announced to the Backward Press that since he was eighty,
And since Wisdom Day was his day,
The day was a good day to bring the citizenry up-to-date.
So it was on Wisdom Day that the citizenry heard
their ragged sage relate,
With his sour wit,
The imminent death of then: small state—
From what?
Ho ho, from dying.
…
Well! you can bet the news woke up the telegraph operator,
And the seamstress who had been sewing the King’s new clothes;
And jarred the Royal Abacus, and the
Army and Navy,
And blew right out of his laboratory the phlogiston chemist.
Everybody was upset.
The streets filled quickly.
But the head of the Riot Commission said the situation would be met.
Meanwhile the Royal Philosopher,
Having said what he had to say, and needing breakfast,
Rolled back in his cave, boiled six four-minute eggs,
Ate the eggs with his cavemate (the boy who cried wolf),
Cleaned up the dishes, put his dirty loin cloth in the washer, counted his gold,
And went back to bed to be comfortably dreamless and old.
And the cobblestone asked of the curb,
Wherefore the hectic pace,
And the nervous creakings of limbs and minds in the marketplace?
And the curb replied to the cobblestone
That the people had suffered great loss in the forenoon.
“Was it a death?” “Not yet.” “A fall in the marketplace?” “Not yet.”
“Mayhap the young Prince was thrown from his horse?”
The curb said it didn’t know but thought it was worse.
“Then,” roundly opined the cobblestone,
“It was the Royal Distillery. It burned down.”
…
But it was not the Royal Distillery, nor the Prince.
No visible catastrophe had occurred; in fact the statistics
From the Departments of Healthy Fixity and Orderly Vice
Showed the day as pleasantly stagnant, meaning normal.
It was the minds, the minds only, that the gay old philosopher
Had touched, but touched well;
—Touched the Royal Artist,
Who strode through the central square, his official thumb up,
Sketching his subjects as sticks, with balloons from their mouths
Ascending, saying, “End now,” saying, “No more”;
—Touched the Culture Commission
To proffer emergency medals
To seven very dead poets for courageously staying so;
—And touched the King,
Who looked out his window idly at green, at blue,
And felt himself drawn
To the nameless aimless where lost kings go.
So it was by evening, on Wisdom Day, that the words of the morning
Had swept B.C. and beyond, leaving
A premonitory gloom in the hearts of the faithful.
And it was by evening
That many a burgher went sadly to packing his duffel.
…
Yes he went to packing
He went to stashing the family treasures in rolled towels;
He went to drawing money from banks, buying tickets, maps;
He went to latching, locking, and zipping; he went to buckling down tarps,
Only to pause, half done, and put it all back,
And sit practicing patience, remembering
That never a room could be had in the countries beyond
For his kind.
And the cobblestone asked of the curb
Wherefore at midnight a steady unseemly rumbling
Filled air, and put earth to shaking.
And the curb replied to the cobblestone
That a fearfulness was occurring under the moon.
“Was it a revolution?” “Could be.” “An earthquake?” “Could be.”
“Mayhap the King has purchased a Sherman tank?”
“More likely,” deductively cobbled the stone in delight,
“Militant youth is ranging the night.”
It must have been nearly dawn when the Royal Philosopher
Woke to the rumbling
And rushed from his cave to be witness
To bulldozers rolling,
Leveling,
Building a runway
Athwart the valley.
It must have been later he came to the palace bearing his slingshot
To waken the King:
“Sire?”
“Seer?”
“Do you hear?”
“I hear.”
And it must have been later yet he returned to his cave
And found there the boy who cried wolf, crying and crying,
“Wolf.”
And the old philosopher said to him,
“Those are not wolves, boy,
Those are cats.”
…
Now engines whine through the valley
Where the backwardness was,
And travelers cluster in bars
In the forwardness.
The sage in his cave, the King in his palace
And representative citizens in their original abodes
May be seen from eleven to seven
In the luxurious spaceport branch of Madame Tussaud’s.