With a literary nod to one of my favorite cycling websites, Cars R Coffins, I give you a verse from Planetary Man (Hombre Planetario), an epic poem composed between 1957 and 1963 by Jorge Carrera Andrade. Apparently, the Ecuadorian poet and diplomat drank the same water as the Minnesota bicycle/punk crew. Long before the age of the Ford Livingroom, he could see that car manufacturers were eager to fill the streets with the creature comforts we associate with home, to the detriment of whatever else is in the way.
XII
Hail to the car makers
Who have populated the planet
With rolling bedrooms,
Parlors, hearses,
On installments, chapels of amulets
And flowers, where the inflated vanity
Of their owners travels,
Oh speed lovers, who tear
The trees from their sleep!
Hail to the inventors
Of the Great Universal Vitamin
To heal the earth of its sickness.
(What should I do without my metaphysical anguish,
Without my blue disease? What should men do
When they feel nothing, perfect mechanisms
In uniform?)
Translated from Spanish by Phillip Barron