Marginalia

Sergio Aragonés appeared in every issue of MAD magazine except one.
And in the margins, at some point in the 1980s,
tiny human dramas began to unfold.

Duck, Bill, Don, Al, et al., were cynics.
Each one of them could be the original American journalistic Diogenes.
Especially Will, decades ago, sitting before a House Committee,
mistaken for a mobster by his neighbourhood
because who else sits in front of House Committees,
under their electric lights, in their black and white TV sets?

Yet the artist in the margins has heart.
Margins are not for cynics.
They are gardens where happiness grows,
away from conspiracy, safely aside.