Though in the wild he is not a Muss-
olini, or not quite, he has a dear-
ly bought and bald-headed public fear
that the old order’s order has shaken loose,
the locomotive stalled, the red caboose
has rolled off backward, feckless, foreign, queer;
the goggling passengers try to smile, sneer:
the question of ticket class is too abstruse,
and yet they have been left behind; they are
getting drunk and telling the waiter that
they’re going to have him fired, but their hist-
rionics never leave the dining car.
The bosses don’t care anyway. Back at
the station they quibble over who’s a fascist.