Monotongue
My Latin may be lacking,
My Dutch may be unknown,
In Thai and Greek I cannot speak,
My English stands alone.
If I can’t win with Mandarin,
I still might cast my a spell –
I shall compete with language sweet,
And use my English well.
The Words Become Flesh
Ev’ry book in the Bible
Is the Book of Numbers really,
With its chapters and its verses,
All ennumerated clearly.
And its drop-caps and its sub-heads,
And its footnotes full of freight –
Now there’s so much ink on its onion-skins,
It doubles up the weight !
Everything from Shells
Downs go up and downs go down,
As wave on wave of frozen ocean
Built each ridge and vale and crown
With ev’ry ancient tide in motion.
Tiny creatures swarmed the sea
And dropped their tiny plates all over,
From Stonehenge to Normandy
As deeply as the Cliffs of Dover.
Singular alga sounds all wrong, as if the term has become strictly a mass noun.
The Hubble Kaleidoscope
So many stars ! And the colours too !
Blurring and sharping into our view.
But best look quick how these nebulas burn –
For sooner or later, the lens must turn.
January, January
Following the annual merry,
Who could welcome January ?
All this longest, poorest month,
We’re waiting for the Thirty-Oneth.
Subscription
To a gentleman of mechanistic means,
Who loves to read and read about ingenious machines:
I bring you word of piston, crank and drum –
And not just once or twice, but for a dozen times to come.
By George !
Bernard Shaw, as sharp as a razor,
Quite at home in a tie and blazer.
But his beard is less Belgravian –
He may be Shaw, but never Shavian.
Curtain Call
You’re filling the halls from the gods to the stalls,
You’re shaking the walls with your blast –
You cry your encores as you cheer yourselves hoarse
For the grand tour de force of the cast.
And how they deserve all the plaudits you serve,
For they are the verve of the play;
But spare just a few for their hard-working crew,
For we perform too, in our way.
Turner Churners
The critics will faun it, the Mail just loathes –
The public’s not stupid, it’s in on the deal –
We’ve always known it’s the emperor’s clothes,
It’s only the artists who think it’s for real.
And all’s just performance-ing art in the end,
These artists we hate yet adore:
That pompously-arrogant, smugly-camp blend –
Such wonderful caricature !
Silent Night
Dreams, come not and bother me tonight,
Tonight I have no time for dreams.
I am exhausted to the seams,
And need the dark to snuff the light.
So do not follow in my deep,
To make me cry or hope or leap.
Tonight, I only wish to lie –
So let me lie, and only dream of sleep.
Rhyming Couplets 