Dark was that day when Diesel conceived his grim engine that begot you, vile invention, more vicious, more criminal than the camera even, metallic monstrosity, bale and bane of out Culture, chief woe of our Commonweal. How dare the Law prohibit hashish and heroin yet licence your use, who inflate all weak inferior egos? Their addicts only do harm to their own lives: your poison the lungs of the innocent, your din dithers the peaceful, and on choked roads hundreds must daily die by chance-medley. Nimble technicians, surely you should hang your heads in shame. Your wit works mighty wonders, has landed men on the Moon, replaced brains by computers, and can smithy a "smart" bomb. It is crying scandal that you cannot take the time or be bothered to build us, what sanity knows we need, an odorless and noiseless staid little electric brougham.
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Authorship:
- by W. H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907 - 1973) [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Rudolf Escher (1912 - 1980), "A curse", 1975, from Three poems by W.H. Auden, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Jeroen Scholten
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 30
Word count: 145