FIRST LINE FROM CALVINO'S SHORT STORY, "THE TRIBE WITH ITS EYES ON THE SKY"

The nights are beautiful and missiles cross the summer sky.
The cherries are in blossom in the city where you can't see the stars.
Packs of rats live under our feet and we live on top of them and under the rats
are the zealot vagrants (zealous about God, not vagrancy), and microbe legions.
To think that, as the missiles slither unshod through the smogasphere
they are teeming with microbes that kerfuffle in tundra conditions.
And then there was a break in the clouds, and the moons came out.
The moons came out and in between them and our planet there were missiles
flanking the sky, trailing white rods of exhaust, targeted where?
But, as I was working on my drink, I could not fit the straw through
the mouthpiece. So, I found the first equilibrium room I could find.
And I finished sipping my elixir squirt and bobbed around in the
equilibrium room with creatures of mine own atmosphere. And then,
we toasted the destruction of the firmament, the imminent chaos of war,
ditches, trenches, mass graves, puppet republics, crates of munitions,
busloads of evacuees, brainiac-guided ballistics, horrible bouquets of the wounded
amputees, widows, manless enclaves of the destitute and despicable.
As the missiles never stopped, we were reassured and kept up the merriment with doomsday scenarios, emergency broadcast ring tones, and annihilationology.