The Week in Verse - poem

National Review, Oct 9, 1995 by Juvenal

The end of summer blowing by offshore

Flattened St. Thomas but the main forbore.

Like Marilyn, the clement hurricane

Might spare the Ship of State -- but it's a Train,

On track, while Dole and Clinton rubberneck

For that so-long-anticipated wreck.

The GOP's reforming Medicare,

While Democrats exploit it for the scare

It gives the old to think that when they're ill

The Government won't be in at the kill.

Meanwhile, th' election still a year away,

Both Dole and Gramm were looking rather fey.

The infighting among the rival camps here

Kicked up the dust round augurs in New Hampshire,

As Wilson closed his Iowa operation

And Powell, like Ike, was led into temptation

When Kristol's siren voice raised up the Standard,

Around which formed an absolutely grand herd

Of Independent types -- deploring those who pandered.}

Out of the public gaze, the careful reader

Observed: Buchanan's got the Union Leader.

When Croats attacked and NATO bombed the Serbs,

They thought it wiser to agree to curbs

On placement of their big artillery

In Sarajevo's hills. The Normandy,

Meanwhile, unloosed its fearsome Tomahawks

At Banja Luka's scared (unrocklike?) rocks.

The world's women, gathered in Peking,

Resolved to fight that patriarchal thing

By claiming their inalienable right

To feel "not in the mood" on any night.

Back in the States, though Packwood got the boot,

Still Miss America wore bathing suit

And Klein, his kids in sexy attitude --

Not comme il faut but quite comme d'habitude --

At last had to be spanked for being, like them, crude.}

-- JUVENAL