“IF A SAND-STORM WOULD COME…”
By:
May 10, 2025
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
If a sand-storm would come
And spit against my windows,
Snapping upon them, and ringing their
vibrations;
Swirling over the roof,
Seeping under the door-jamb,
Suffocating me and making me struggle for
air.
But I only see sand,
Sand lying dead in the sun,
Lines and lines of sand,
Sand.
I will paste newspapers over the windows
to shut out the sand,
I will fit them into one another, and fasten
the corners.
Then I will strike matches
And read of politics, and murders, and
festivals,
Three years old.
But I shall not see the sand any more
And I can read
While my matches last.
— Excerpt from “In a Time of Dearth.” Published in Lowell’s Pictures of the Floating World (1919)
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.