Plot for a Guianese Operetta

The Dual Monarchy, despite its unique understanding of the problems in-

volved in the co-existence of various languages and races, at the present time desires

no African or Asian colonies -Count Berchtold

Baroque of steeple, tropical of width and air,

St. Florian among the Heathen fronts the square.

Street signs in German, Magyar on the obverse side,

Direct one toward the Oper. There, The Bartered Bride.

Applauding still-all standees, although no less regal-

Palm trees seem in silhouette the double eagle.

Thick though K.u.K. may monogram the lights,

The natives and the Croats strike for language rights.

Elisabeth the Kaiserin, trés décolletée,

Uplifts a cast iron bosom toward the pigeons. They,

The nihilism in the air, lay on the heart

Their gray, corrosive chemistry.

By law apart

In their Imperial and Royal new locations,

Tribal types and local Jews outline new nations.

After, when the Prison of the Peoples waltz

Suborns the B. Juarez Shebeen, the new wave halts.

Analysis each noon by cable from Vienna.

Freud is much the same. He is no better. Then a

Second, even more electric message comes:

"Archduke assassinated." Tom-tom Boy, the drums;

We have a power failure. In the beat between,

Those outlines have an anthem. Yet the nation seen,

The drumbeat heard, are all that fill them. Man and Boy,

We have no picture save the puzzle we destroy.

In our fashion, Francis Joseph, we are kaisertreu.