5520. I'M SORRY, BUT I ABHOR OPERA

I'M SORRY, BUT I 

ABHOR OPERA

Before the day is long, the long mornings shorten.

I see people singing while they do their chores  -

singing, in fact, about their chores. What is all that?

I hear them singing of larks and broken hearts, the

red sea and awkward virgins. They sing on horseback,

and in carriages. Like some inebriated parson in a country

church permeated by chemicals and coal gas, they all look, to

me, as drunks, and dumb as a stupor  -  crazed, berserk, the lot.

-

I'd rather sweep with sticks the czar's country lane than bend

my knee to one of these sick fantasies. Rich people who swoon 

cannot fall too soon   -   I want to be there when their revolution

rings its noisesome bell to take them down a notch. In fact, to tell

the honest truth, I'd like to be the one to do it, with a knife perhaps.