It was not confined to the Oran of Camus. The plague ran in the blood of men in sharkskin suits, who ran for President promising life and delivering death. And here at home, something died. The bacillus moved among us, slaying that old America where the immigrants lit a million dreams in the shadows of the bridges, killing the great brawling country of barnstormers and wobblies and home-run hitters, the place of Betty Grable and Carl Furillo and heavyweight champions of the world. And through the fog of the plague, most art withered into journalism.
Painters lift the easel to scrawl their innocence on walls and manifestos.
Symphonies died on crowded roads. Novels served as furnished rooms for ideology. And as the evidence piled up, as the rock was pushed back to reveal the worms, many retreated into that past that never was, the place of balcony dreams in Loew's Met, fair women and honorable men, where we browned ourselves in the Creamsicle summers, only faintly hearing the young men march to the troopships, while Jo Stafford gladly promised her fidelity. Tossed on a pilgrim tide. Land where the poets died.