Why Does The Summer Of 1939 Sound Like Now? Poem by Tom J. Mariani

The World's Fair
from the Great White Way-
where rides
and the freaks
and the Aquacade were-
to the grand
temples to American industry,
promised a future
no one belived in.
The buildings were,
in the words
and fashion of the time,
streamlined.
Their exteriors were
softened
into graceful curves
as if they were
in a high wind,
taking off into
some promised land,
and those of us
who knew
it wasn't true
tended to
huddle together.

The interiors
of those temporary buildings
that looked so solid
were in constant movement-
mechanical marching
of cows and railroads
cars and electronic promises,
pioneers and robots and
tumbles, falls, veils of
water rushed toward
that overused,
ephemeral tomorrow.
And we knew it,
we all knew it.