The sailors come ashore

Out of their hollow ships,

Mild-looking middle-class boys

Who read the comic strips;

One baseball game is more

To them than fifty Troys.

They look a bit lost, set down

In this unamerican place

Where natives pass with laws

And futures of their own;

They are not here because

But only just-in-case.

The whore and ne’er-do-well

Who pester them with junk

In their grubby ways at least

Are serving the Social Beast;

They neither make nor sell —

No wonder they get drunk.

But the ships on the dazzling blue

Of the harbor actually gain

From having nothing to do;

Without a human will

To tell them whom to kill

Their structures are humane

And, far from looking lost,

Look as if they were meant

To be pure abstract design

By some master of pattern and line,

Certainly worth every cent

Of the millions they must have cost.