Sophisticated Cruelty

A two-line aphorism written on corporate letterhead from a Pittsburgh music distributing company, declaring that sophisticated cruelty is Satan's finest hour.

Two lines of aphorism sitting beneath a 'Music Distributing Company' letterhead - 'Exclusive Wurlitzer and U. S. Billiards Distributors,' an address and phone number in Pittsburgh - and the collision of stationery and statement is the whole poem. The text, 'Sophisticated Cruelity / is Satan's finest hour,' lands hardest because it shares the page with jukebox and pool-table commerce: cruelty refined to elegance arrives the way the letterhead does, through business, with a number you could dial. Whether the heading is retained as found material or intended as the poem's frame, the effect is the same - evil presented not as horror but as a distributor's invoice.