Butter Battle Critique

By Claudia Rosett

 One day, making plans for the publishing season,

A poet sat down, and he started to reason,

He said, “What is needed for children –

Aged four –

Is a bopulous book

About nuclear war.”

Now, this writer was neither obscure nor pedantic,

He thought it out wisely

He didn’t get frantic

He thought of the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

He thought very broadly (If not very far)

And prompted, no doubt, by the six o’clock news,

He finally thought of a theme he could use.

“They’re really no different than we are,” he said,

“We line up for movies, they line up for bread!”

They too enjoy jazz,

And blue jeans

And ballet

Why, if I ran the SALT talks

I’d know what to say.

The strategy needed is really a cinch!

Remember how well we made peace

With the Grinch?

And the Dr.-Suess-peace-machine

Started to splutter

And coughed out a book

About battle and butter.

You just have to see it

Just take a quick look

To see all the thought

That went into this book

Where the arms race is seen

Through the eyes of a Yook.

Now, this Yook is a creature

Who’s rather like us,

A kind little fellow

Caught up in a fuss.

You see, he is serving the Chief Yookeroo

And WHAT does the chief Yookeroo want to do?

He wants to blow Zooks to Sala-ma-goo.

The reason the Chief Yookeroo wants to fight

Is that Zooks do what Yooks think

Is really not right.

“In every Zook home and every Zook town

Every Zook eats his bread

With the butter side down!”

The Yooks are alarmed by this awful offense,

They don’t understand it, it doesn’t make sense,

It’s the kind of behavior they just have to stop

Because they eat their bread

With the butter on top!

So both sides build weapons

And build up a wall

And danger looms large

Though the reasons are small.

Well, you know what comes next

And it’s not very nice.

The Boys in the Backroom

Invent a device

That will finish the spat

At a terrible price.

And there the book ends,

And it seems at the ending

The cause that Yooks fight for

Is not worth defending.

But isn’t this logic a little misled?

Is it really just butter that Zooks want to spread?

We wonder what children in Poland would say-

Would the Afghans and Yemens see it this way?

Is Sakharov starving

For how one should eat?

Why do people leave Moscow for Mulberry Street?

The fable is cute, but it wears a bit thin

For those coming over the wall in Berlin.

Oh dear Dr. Seuss, with your Zaxes and Sneetches

You’ve charmed us, disarmed us,

But someone who preaches

That buttering bread is the scope of the trouble

Is living his life in a nursery school bubble.

His brain filled with ooblek and elephant birds,

Finally carried away with nonsensical words.

This weapon, this Bitsy-Big-Boy-Boomeroo,

Is a terrible threat

And we’re scared of it too…

But short of deterrence,

Just what can we do?

Wall Street Journal, Jul 2, 1984