Cassandra Drops Into Verse
by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

We’d break the city’s unfeeling clutch
      And back to good Mother Earth we’d go,
With Birds and blossoms and such-and-such,
      And love and kisses and so-and-so.
We’d build a bungalow, white and green,
      With rows of hollyhocks, all sedate.
And you’d come out on the five-eighteen
      And meet me down at the garden gate.
We’d leave the city completely flat
      And dwell with chickens and cows and bees,
‘Mid brooks and bowers and this and that,
      And joys and blisses and those and these.
We’d greet together the golden days,
      And hail the sun in the morning sky.
We’d find an Eden—to coin a phrase—
      The sole inhabitants, you and I.
With sweet simplicity all our aim,
      We’d fare together to start anew
In peace and quiet and what’s-its-name,
      And soul communion, or what have you?
But oh, my love, if we made the flight,
      I see the end of our pastoral plan . . .
Why, you’d be staying in town each night,
      And I’d elope with the furnace man.

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