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Can see future events, that is for sure.
The following decades she can see
But she wouldn’t reveal her secrets to me.
What’ll happen next year? What wonders great?
Yes, I would gladly see my own fate!
My fate, the arts, the country and empire,
But Grandmother wouldn’t let me inquire.
I pestered then and it went very well,
First silence, and then she gave me hell.
Lectured me up and down, and yet
There is no doubt that I am her pet!
“For once, your wishes I’ll grant, ” she said
And she gave me the glasses from her head.
“Now hurry out and choose a place
Where flocks of people sit or pace,
Stand where you can see what passes
And look at the masses through my glasses.
Trust my word on this, you’ll at once be able
To see the crowd like cards on a table.
And from these cards you can foresee
The future that is meant to be. ”
“Thanks, ” I said and ran to see,
But then, where would most people be?
On Long Line? There one catches cold.
On East Street ? Bah! Dirt, filth and mold!
But in the theater? Ah, that’d be dandy,
Tonight’s entertainment was so handy-
Here I am, then! Myself I’ll introduce,
Permit me Grandma’s glasses to produce,
So I can see—No, don’t go away!
To see, if a playing card display
Truly can predict what Time will make.
Your silence for a “Yes” I’ll take;
For thanks, you’ll be confirmed into the group,
All together here within the troupe.
I’ll predict for you, for me, for country and more,
And we’ll see what the cards can have in store.
(And then he put the glasses on.)
Yes, that’s right! Now I laugh! Hee hee,
Oh, if you could just come up and see!
Where here are many manly cards,
And a whole row of Queens of Hearts.
The black ones there—clubs, spades too,
Now soon I’ll have a perfect view.
The Queen of Spades with intense attack
Has turned her thoughts to Diamond Jack.
Oh yes, this view’s making me quite drunk
There’s lots of money in here sunk,
And strangers from afar return—
But that’s not what we want to learn.
Politicians? Let’s see! Yes, The Times!
We’ll read it later, save our dimes.Slander now would harm the paper’s fate,
Let’s not take the best bone from the plate.
The theater then ? What news ? tone and taste?
The good graces of the director I can’t waste.
My own future? Yes, you know, one’s fate,
Lays on our hearts a heavy weight.
I see!—I cannot say just what I see,
But you will hear it immediately.
Who is the happiest in our sphere?
The happiest ? Easily I’ll find him here.
It is, of course,—No, that will disconcert,
And many surely will be hurt!
Who’ll live the longest? The lady there? That man?
No, revealing that is a worser plan!
About—? Yes, in the end, I myself don’t know; when,
Being shy and so embarrassed, it’s easy to offend.
Now I would know what you believe and think
I should with seer’s power offer you to drink?
You think? No, beg pardon, what?
You think it will end up in naught?
You surely know it’s merely ring-a-ding.
I’ll not say more, dear honored gathering.
And let you have your own view of this thing.
The poem was superbly delivered and was very well received. Among the audience was the intern from the hospital, who seemed to have forgotten his adventure of the night before. He was wearing the galoshes since no one had claimed them, and since the street was muddy, they were useful to him.
He liked the poem.
He was very taken with the notion and would really have liked to have such glasses. Maybe if they were used correctly, you could look right into people’s hearts. That was really more interesting, he thought, than to find out what would happen next year. After all, you’ll find that out, but never the other. “Imagine if one could look into the hearts of that row of ladies and gentlemen there in the first row. There would have to be some kind of opening, a kind of shop; how my eyes would go shopping then! In that lady over there I would most likely find a dress shop. At that one over there—the store is empty, but it needs to be cleaned out. But there are some well established shops too! Well, well,” he sighed. “I know one in which everything is of the best, but there is already a clerk there, and he is the only thing wrong with the whole store! Some of them would call out, ‘Please come in.’ Oh, I wish I could go in, like a lovely little thought right through their hearts.”
See, that was enough for the galoshes. The intern shrunk together and began a most unusual trip right through the hearts of the audience in the front row. The first heart he passed through was a woman’s, but he thought at once that he was at the Orthopedic Institute, which is what you call those places where doctors take off growths to help people straighten their backs. He was in the room where the plaster casts of the deformed limbs were hanging on the walls. The difference was that at the Institute they were cast when the patients come in, but here in this heart they were preserved as the healed patients went out. The casts of the physical and mental flaws of friends were preserved here.
Then he quickly passed into another woman’s heart, but this one seemed to him like a big, holy church. The white dove of innocence was fluttering over the high altar, and he would have sunk to his knees here, but he had to hurry into the next heart. He could still hear the organ music, and he felt that he had become a new and better
