It was a morning like any other. <br />A cloud from the South, a sparrow <br />sitting on the windowsill, eating, <br />the Postman, ringing twice next door, <br />a streetcar of desire screeching to a halt, <br />and the traffic cop attending to impatience, <br />and, at rush hour, his recurring boxershort creep. <br /> <br />Across the street the baker was yawning again, <br />that Yugoslavian woman dumping soapy water <br />out the window onto the busy sidewalk, <br />and the paperboy, aged seventy plus, hoarsely, <br />proclaiming that Nixon was the man to be watched. <br /> <br />From across the barely polluted river of Babylon <br />came a breeze of air, no not fresh air as such, <br />it brought with it an invisible cloud of doom, <br />which settled, like the sticky sugar coating, <br />applied to a jelly-filled donut, onto the city, <br />the country, and it swept the world from there, <br />its humble beginnings notwithstanding. <br /> <br />'Nonobstant' mumbled Monsieur Cazin, <br />French travel agent, occupying a round kiosk, <br />no one knew of course what exactly it meant, <br />and even the French teacher from the school, <br />he just scratched his head. But he also suspected, <br />it was more a gut feeling though, that something, <br />something awfully big was taking place, merde, <br />it seemed to fit, intuitively, and then, without warning, <br />time stood still, the earth stopped its rotation, <br />people's hearts stopped and not a breath was heard. <br /> <br />And when it all started up again, for reasons unknown, <br />the world as it was known had ceased to exist. <br />It was the day that claimed the word humane, <br />with all its meaning and substance, its noblesse. <br />The death of Humane Medicine was a twin of many <br />to the tragic loss of all that made us human beings, <br />not just people, but homo sapiens par excellence.<br /><br />Herbert Nehrlich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-death-of-a-humane-society/
