In a surrealist year
of sandwichmen and sunbathers
dead sunflowers and live telephones
house-broken politicos with party whips
performed as usual
in the rings of their sawdust circuses
where tumblers and human cannonballs
filled the air like cries
when some cool clown
pressed an inedible mushroom button
and an inaudible Sunday bomb
fell down
catching the president at his prayers
on the 19th green
O it was a spring
of fur leaves and cobalt flowers
when cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain
drowning the meadows with madness
while out of every imitation cloud
dropped myriad wingless crowds
of nutless nagasaki survivors
And lost teacups
full of our ashes
floated by
From A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1958.