http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=982

“Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth.
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.”
–W.H. Auden, “September, 1939”


"Merrill Lynch helped finance the cotton trade before the Civil War! Say it was an essential “linch-pin” in the rise of the South on the backs of black slaves. Say that “free-market,” deregulated capitalism is now getting its due; if I am in steerage on the Titanic and I hear that the swells who have been dancing above our heads are about to take a dip in the sea, Schadenfreude doesn’t calm my queasy stomach." Gary Corseri



Schadenfreude in the City

Where did this problem start,
this stuff about wondering where
a siren goes in the dark
or during the rain, the curtains
pulled aside and you want to see
mainstreet, hope to see a fire
or the headlight of someone's car
dangling like an eye out
of its socket, all hay-wires.
Here, it is night and a plane
ascends, banks then disappears.
A siren peals through the silent
predawn cold and continues on.
Then another. It is always
the second one that gets you going. - Margaret Ruth Porter, Beirut 2005