A World Of One's Own Poem by Percy Dovetonsils

At the same time
Shakespeare’s sister,
Shakespeare’s brilliant,
pregnant, sister,
was killing herself
In London,
the North American Continent
was doing perfectly well
without her or her genius
or her brother’s genius
on the other side of the Atlantic.
Well, not perfectly well.
The Spanish were already making
a big mess of Mexico
and Central America.
A BIG mess.
But lots of things
were still going well
north of the border
that wasn’t yet there.
The glaciers
had obligingly melted away
thousands of years before
leaving a land
carpeted from coast to coast
with primeval forests,
sky-darkening legions
of migrating fowl,
undamned rivers,
teeming with fish,
coursing their way
to the sea,
and, of course,
hundreds of indigenous tribes
who had managed to live
there
thousands of years
without building
one Wal-Mart
or Super Wal-Mart.
All these beings
were expressing their genius
in a mindblowingly beautiful
ensemble production
without benefit
of pen and paper,
or proscenium arch,
without benefit
of admission
to the best universities,
without benefit
of 500 pounds a year
and a room of one’s own.
All they asked
was that the rest of the world,
especially Europe,
stay the f... away
and
leave them the f...
alone.
They were not
to get
their wish.