With apologies to 20th-century author of children’s poems Ivy O Eastwick, whose ‘Timothy Boon’ you may have encountered as a 20th-century kid, this refabricated English rhyme with Chinese characteristics exemplifies the high-altitude balloon the US military shot down last week that was wafting over US skies. The Chinese insist it was not a spy balloon but was for weather observation and had been ‘blown off course’. Quite like Shanxi’s/Timothy’s.
It has emerged that similar Chinese ‘spy balloons’ had ‘drifted past Hawaii and across Florida’ in 2019. Apparently, two other balloons had floated past US airspace during Donald Trump‘s time. This seems to have set Democats among the Republigeons.
A clue may be found in the concluding stanza of the rhyme, ‘Shanxi Yu,/ And his balloon,/ Caught by the breeze/ Flew to the moon;/ Up past the trees,/ Over the seas,/ Up to the moon -/ Swift as you please! -/ And, of, I forget,/ They have not come down yet!’
