Today is traditional tax day. They’ve provided a little extension this year, as if tax returns were term papers, but April 15 is a time when it’s natural to contemplate our system.

Usually I’m not negative. But sometimes I sink a little low. Sometimes my attitude is not optimistic. Sometimes I just think we’re toast.

That’s when I also suspect this isn’t news. I don’t think we’ve degenerated; it’s just that the consequences are catching up with us. It’s always been a matter of spans; economic and historical cycles are different than human lifetimes, so it’s hard to see cause and effect with clarity.

I’ve been browsing through the autobiography of Mark Twain. He is usually upbeat but can be otherwise. I was struck recently by some words he penned on March 30, 1906. Almost exactly 105 years ago:

The prior engagement which I spoke of to Tchaykoffsky was an engagement to act as Chairman of the first meeting of the Association which was formed five months ago in the interest of the adult blind. Joseph H. Choate and I had a very good time there, and I came away with the conviction that that excellent enterprise is going to flourish, and will bear abundant fruit. It will do for the adult blind what Congress and the several legislatures do so faithfully and with such enthusiasm for our lawless railway corporations, our rotten beef trusts, our vast robber dens of insurance magnates; in a word, for each and all of our multimillionaires and their industries – protect them, take watchful care of them, preserve them from harm like a Providence, and secure their prosperity, and increase it.

Gad: add big Pharma and the words could have been written today. Reading them reminded me of a poem I called “Attack from Without, Corruption from Within.” Usually the sonnets I post went through long periods of revision, but this one was jotted in a day and never altered. The day happened to be September 11, 2001:

I saw a man with radiation burns
who speaking from his gurney was as doomed
as Texas guilt, as certain as returns
the night. He looked and spoke like he assumed
a future, but I understood within
he was a dead man – very mortified:
a fire victim lacks sufficient skin
but he was sear-diminished from inside.

Rambunctious we are similarly charred –
we’re blasted inside out by circuitry
in tight array, a micron for a yard.
Apparently alive, our destiny
is certain death within tomorrow’s reach:
as nasty as a center-rotten peach.