Turning and turning in the widening gyro
The kebab cannot hear the kebaber;
Wraps fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The mayonnaise-soaked tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of flavor is drowned;
The best lack all Hellman's, while the worst
Are full of passionate viscosity.
Surely some indigestion is at hand;
Surely the Sandwich Coming is at hand.
The Sandwich Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Subway
Troubles my sight: somewhere in vats of the linoleum counter
A shape with a meatball sub body and the head of an Italian BMT,
A bread hellscape blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the soggy footlongs.
The meatballs drop again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of heartburn
Were vexed to nightmare by an ice cream scoop full of tuna salad,
And what rough feast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethleham to be born?
