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).