One early afternoon at the nadir
or the zenith of the so-called Cuban
Missile Crisis – a good or, rather, bad
two years before ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘Fail-Safe’
were screened – I was waiting in the drear
and white-tiled catacombs of Liverpool’s
Central Station – where it always seemed
as if it were night and the blitz still on
and water appeared to drip continuously –
for the next train, under the Mersey,
to Chester, when I heard somewhere beyond me,
somewhere unidentifiable, a loud,
continuing roar like boulders crumbling
or, more likely, city blocks tumbling
onto the streets above and I feared
that either or both the shoe-thumping
Premier and the tanned President
had advanced Armageddon. I believed,
then, rhetoric and realpolitik
were one so the momentary fear was
visceral.
The Soviet Empire has been demolished,
the American reduced, not least
its consumption of Havana Cigars,
but Cuba welcomes all tourists, though those
with only U.S. dollars to exchange
are surcharged.
By David Selzer