Exponential Growth

Les trente glorieuses

They call the years from ’45 to ’85 “the thirty glorious ones.”

They’d have done better to kick out the bums!

I was growing up then—I quite enjoyed the farce

and, playing possum, let them pass.

Les trente merdeuses

“. . . ces jours merdeux arrivent accumulés entre le nez et les yeux, il y en a rien que là.”--Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932)

 

The West’s heroic age is now  no more:

it perished in the trente merdeuses,

the years from late ’14 to long ’44.

I was just a kid but saw it go.

Don’t blame me! How could I know?

--Peter Dreyer

Epigraph: “ . . . those shitty days just piled up in your face.”—Céline, Voyage to the End of the Night (freely translated).