Third Annual Poetic Cross-Dressing Contest

In our continuing and ever-popular Third Annual Poetic Cross-Dressing Competition (in which each submitted poem had to be derived from one famous poem in the voice of another poet who was not the author of the piece being parodied) Ms. Kelli Russell Agodon, Ms. Terese Coe, and Ms. Jennifer Reeser once again volunteered to serve as judges.

The contest results were

Third Runner-Up was David Wright's "Prufrock by Gwendolyn Brooks"

Second Second Runner-Up was Robert Schecter's "Red Wheelbarrow by John Hollander"

First Runner-Up was Don Zirilli's "Introduction to Poetry by Sylvia Plath"

The First Prize winner was (wait for it...)

Nick Bruno's "The Raven by Billy Collins".

The complete series of poems are reproduced below for your amusement and edification, listed in order of their original entry.

Don Zirilli

Introduction to Poetry (Billy Collins) by Sylvia Plath


Your poem is
dead, Mr. Mouse
see its light

screaming on the color slide
(who let lava on the water-ride?)

those are flies not bees
upon its hide

Crawl inside it
probe for a way out

walk inside (do you
with four legs call that walking?)
feel for a switch

like Daddy when he’s mad
slap your waterskis on
death is like an ocean

names stay on the beach.

You only want to tie it up
so you can pretend it would move

and torture out the truth
like a stupid ventriloquist

Dummy? Dummy?
Is that you?

Robert Schecter

The Road Not Taken

(as written by Basho Matsuo from the point of view of a frog )

   Youth, two lilly pads
drift within my leaping range.
   One of them still drifts.

Anna Lynn Hammond


The Red Wheelbarrow
-by Russell Edson

A glazed chicken walks into a room and starts shitting out red wheelbarrows.
So much for Depends™, says the rain.

David Wright


Jorie Graham Visits the Paris Metro


Apparition     of these intuitions of a face, a construct, a bullwark against the facelessness, as                                    Rilke knew the faceless woman at her Root (the twisted bare tendril of                          a tree infolded in the earth, earth the black, eventual home)

In a crowd     as one ceaseless face racing against the invisible current of other crowds,
                      the trainside cycles of   at-last-screeching-to-a-stop and the updraft also                                   (in)visible, the (in)divisible heart (that also twists a tendril, aorta, ventricle a                              branching rail line through the (un)mapped body's dark and delicate tunnels)

Petals          fiction and force of beauty, always ending. They arrange a shimmering instant                               (again) and end in a shimmering, layered dark that intricately wilts to memory
                   (the only obsidian heart of  knowing, the episteme, a likeness of knowing.                                   Nobody gets to Know a pure thing: unbidden).

On a wet    the limitless dropping of dew, the limitless hope of dew also a connection,                                    tenuous (and tenacious) to seas, the coursing geniuses beyond which we hurl                               our selves into a wake of (re)collection: sinew of creation (tied down by                               water) imagine (another sinew) another (di)vision of the evaportating Word.    

                              Black bough.

Katy Salter Goodell

Jack and Jill (Mother Goose)
by Carl Sandburg (coached by Betty Friedan)

While Jack's in Tokyo and New York
Climbing the corporate ladder,
Fetch a pail of water.
Pile high the laundry and let me work.
I am Jill.
I stumble after.

Pile high the laundry at Exxon,
At Sony and G.E.
Shovel it toward me.
Fetch pails of water and let me work.
Two years, ten years, let me work.
And passers-by will ask:
Who is this girl?
Whose ex is she?
I am Jill.
I stumble after.

Kimberley Copeland

Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand
By e.e. cummings
A la Gertrude Stein

Spring is like a perhaps hand
perhaps a spring-like handspring, hand
perhaps is like a spring.

Robert Schecter

A RED, RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams done by Robert Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red wheelbarrow
   .... That's newly glazed with rain:
O my Luve's like a snow-white chicken
..   .. Who sees the water drain!

It makes no sense, my bonnie lass,
   .... But deep in luve am I:
A wheelbarrow? A chicken?
.   ... I will but wonder why

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
.   ... And the rocks melt wi' the sun,
Why I took two images
   .... And made them into one!

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
.   ... Till a' the seas gang dry.
A wheelbarrow? A chicken?
   .... So much depends on why!

Robert K. Meyer II

THE SICK ROSE by T S ELIOT

I. The Burial (or Planting) of the Rose Bush

April is the coolest month for planting
a multifoliate rose in my twilight garden.
Laughing children hidden amongst the leaves
sing, "April showers bring May flowers"
but they know not the howling storm:
the king at midnight and the scaffold.
Fly, pilgrim, fly on the Mayflower
from these kingdoms, these alien people
clutching their gods
and their dark secret loves.

Gypsy Rose, the famous fortune-teller,
was known to have a bad cold.
O Rose, thou art sick,
a mere specter of a Rose;
your whole world is a hospital bed
as fever ascends from feet to head.

II. The Love Song of Rosie the Riveting

She sat in her chair, like a burning throne,
playing with herself
a game of chess.
Leaning out of her window sill
of her tenement in Antwerp,
her Russian eye looks in vain
for Karpov (...even Bobby Fischer would do).

"You want to play some chess, big boy?
You'll find my bed has crimson joy!"
She check-mates them with automatic hand,
puts a record on the gramophone...
"One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble..."
and thinks, "Well now that's done. I'm better alone."

O Rose, thou art sick
sick, sick, sick
thou art
Rose
sick

III. Second-Hand Rose's Sunday Morning Service

Rose of memory,
think of the intersection of the timeless
with time. In your beginning is your end,
the War of the Roses does thy life destroy.

I am not Lord Krishna, nor was meant to be;
am an ambulance driver, one to start the motor.
The second-hand
goes from minutes, to hours, to days, to years;
time past and time future point to one end:
time present;
I would present you a bouquet of roses
but now, Rose, thou art sick,
let me take you to the emergency room.
We will fare forward,
you wrapt in the old miasmal
hospital gown.

Betty N. Buckman

A Blood Red Rose
By Carl Sandburg

My love is like a blood red rose,
So rare here, as is grass.
At three the union whistle blows.
She slides her time-card pass.

As cunning as an alley cat,
As heady as dark grog,
My love is spare, her beauty taut,
A vision borne through smog.

Swift gutters flow, the Nile of life.
Worn blacktop swills the sun.
I never bid, "Please be my wife!"
But is our swing shift done?

Farewell for now, my only Love.
Goodbye, but not really.
The el that streaks along above
May jostle you and me.

Robert Schecter

RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams done by "Anonymous"

If you feel yourself too slowly sicken
And just want the process to quicken,
Go stick your head
In a wheelbarrow's red
Rain mixed with urine of chicken.

Kimberly Copeland

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings—Maya Angelou
Bukowski style

the little black-eyed guy paces
the length
of his man-made domain

chatters, scratches
chatters, scratches

flaps his wings
then crashes
into metal

and even with his grain-sized brain

the little pecker
knows
that he’s been captured

forced to play
the part of a pet
or worse yet,

he’ll be

beheaded, plucked and basted
with a tangy marinade

either way

the feathered fucker’s only one refrain from death.

Oswald LeWinter

W.B. YEATS: THE SPUR a la Paul Celan

Stop wandering between lust and the verb to rage.
Clarity is no prerogative of old age;
Soulplates of syntax plagued me when young.
The empty center spurs me now into song.

Christopher T George

The Love Song of Lord Jeffrey Archer
By Himself

Let us go then, you and I,
When my reputation is laid out in the tabloids,
My possessions, all my books, on Sotheby's block,
Let us go through the Elizabethan streets,
Filled with winebars and shish-kebob treats,
Streets that wend like a Tory politician's argument
Of lame intent
To lead you to that overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, ‘Who was Lord Jeffrey Archer?’
It's time for our departure.

In the mews, the paparazzis come and go
With the politeness of Charles Guiteau.

The yellow journalist who sticks his nose in my windows,
The yellow dog who slobbers as he accesses my billet doux,
Who sticks nicotined fingers into the corners of my life,
Lingers over each indiscretion that colors me like a stain,
Let spill upon the mat the morning headlines,
‘Lord Jeffrey's Caught Once More
With His Trousers Down!’ The glare of strobes,
Journalists ensconced on my doorstep,
Microphones and lenses stuck in my face,
All of them to record my latest misstep,
To chronicle Lord Jeffrey's peccadilloes.
I wish I could climb Parliament's stairs,
Slip by the terrace, make a sudden leap,
And end it all in the Thames' muddy depths.
Instead, I down another whisky and fall asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the sallow men who creep along the street,
Trailing their notebooks and cameras;
Time for a lordly scribe and disgraced politico like me,
And time for yet more Archer indiscretions,
They'll get their scoops, take their fill,
Before I take tea at Buck House with Liz and Phil.

In the mews, the paparazzis come and go
With the politeness of Charles Guiteau.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Does Archer dare?’ Indeed I dare
To ascend to the halls of power. You'll see me there,
I may be temporarily down but I'm still capable.
For I have known the life of Cain and Abel,
I've made a killing in the market as at the polls,
Been ogled at Ascot and Wimbledon, ridden in my Rolls,
Have known joy and black despair of a prison cell,
Memorandum. Must change socks. They smell!

And I have known the prying eyes, critics that praise,
Wordsmiths that fix you with a poisoned phrase,
From Fleet Street to Park and Madison,
And I have known the arms of lovers,
Arms milky white and dusky hued,
Limbs that reminded me of you.

. . . . .

Shall we say, we travelled
Like a wraith through London's streets
And watched euros pass hands in exchange
For welcoming thighs and generous teats? . . .

While the paparazzi aren't lookin'
I should flee the coop like Lord Lucan.

. . . . .

Indeed, it would have been worth it, after all,
After the champagne brunches, the weekends in Capri,
Minister without portfolio, Maggie Thatcher and me.
It would have been worthwhile
To face the paparazzi with a smile,
To tell them: ‘I'm Jeffrey Archer, come from the dead,
Not in the least sorry for the life I've lead.’

Yes, I risked it all and more!
It was worth it, after all,
Although it's not quite my style
It would have been worthwhile,
If I could turn have turned
toward the cameras and said:
‘This is not me at all,
The man you think I am
is not me at all.’

. . . . .

No! I am no P.M., nor was meant to be;
I am Liz's attendant lord,
a court jester with hemorrhoids,
Fit to aid her progress, fodder for the tabloids.
I'll advise Charles, the prince, no doubt,
At least, if I can't answer all his needs,
I'll contract out.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
Will I smoke Acapulco gold?

Do I dare teach at Cambridge or Oxford or Eton even?
I must give the students something to believe in.

Robert Schecter

RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams done by John Hollander

Higgledy piggledy,
Wheelbarrow glistening
Stunningly crimson with
Sparkles of rain.

Next to the wheelbarrow
Stands a white chicken whose
Feathery purity
Makes red profane.

Robert K. Meyer II

A WHEELBARROW IN THE METRO by EZRA POUND

the apparition of these chickens in the rain:
feathers on a wet, red wheelbarrow

Christopher T. George

I Want to Marry Daddy
By Sylvia Plath*

I rail and rage against
the taking of my father.
Even his mind, his heart,
his face, as a boy of 17
I love terribly. I lust
for the knowing of him.
I look at the Professor
and practically rip him up
to beg him to be my father.
To live with the rich,
chastened, wise mind
of an older man. I must
beware of marrying
for that. Perhaps a young
man with a brilliant father.
I could wed both.

* Found poem adapted from an entry
in Sylvia Plath's diary, March 1956.

Robert K. Meyer II

THE WHEELBARROW by EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY

My wheelbarrow burns at both ends;
but rain or chickens? ...That depends.

Christopher T. George

WHEELBARROWS by ALLEN GINSBERG

The best minds of my generation have been
destroyed by f*****g wheelbarrows.

Robert k Meyer II

THE RED WHEELBARROW by ALLEN GINSBERG

I saw the best wheelbarrows of my generation
destroyed by redness.

Christopher T. George

THE RED WHEELBARROWS by SENATOR JOE McCARTHY
It's time to take
all the card-carrying Red
wheelbarrows out and burn them.

Robert Schecter

RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams done by William Shakespeare

O wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow, wherefore art thou wheelbarrow?
Deny your redness and refuse the rain,
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a white chicken.

Betty N. Buckman

RED WHEELBARROW
by Kahlil Gibran

And what is it to work with love?
It is to pull red wagons with wheels sprung from your heart, even as your beloved were to ride within.


The Dharma thing just jumped out at me.

Robert Schecter

RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams done by Emily Dickinson

A snow-white Fellow in the grass
–-This one not so narrow–-
Is but -- a Chicken -- walking past--
A rain-glazed red Wheelbarrow.

RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams done, once again, by Emily Dickinson

I’m a red Wheelbarrow! Who are you?
Are you a red Wheelbarrow, too?
Then there’s a pair of us –don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know!

How dreary to be a White Chicken!
How hopeless, like the dead,
To pass the livelong rainy day
Wishing that you were red!

Paul Stevens

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THIS.INSUING.SONNET.
Mr. W.C.W. ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVERLIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH

The Redde Wheelebarrowe

Shall I compare thee to a red wheelbarrow?
...Thou art more rusty, and thy paint more peels;
Rough paths do harrass thee with bump and furrow,
...And long neglect besets thy squeaky wheels.
Sometimes thy tyres are flat and axle loose,
...And often dried-up crud encrusts thy pan;
Thy sides are dinged with passing hard misuse,
...Thy'erratic track defies the Will of man.
For thy bent, wonky handles shall not steer
...Thee to thy destination uno'erturned,
Nor shall Bruce brag, as he sits drinking beer,
...That he to master thy fell ways hath learned:
.....So long as chicken squawks, and rain descends,
.....Shall I curse thee, on whom so much depends.

Nick Bruno

THE RAVEN
As written by Billy Collins

The neighbors' raven will not stop cawing.
He is cawing the same screetching squawk
that he caws every time he gets into the house.
They must have trained him to sneak in .

The neighbors' raven will not stop squawking.
I should have closed all the windows in the house,
instead I put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear the refrain under the music,
caw, caw, caw,

and now I can see him flitting in the orchestra,
his beady eyes gleaming confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for a squawking black bird.
When the record finally ends he is still cawing,

perched there on a chair in the percussion section cawing,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
standing behind a pallid bust of Pallas,
entreating him with his baton.

While the other musicians listen in respectful
silence the bird caws - a capella - that endless staccato
and refrain, I can't help thinking I should have shut the door.

Hannah Craig

At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, South Carolina
by Ted Berrigan

Walk in. The pregnant tour guide
Wants tickets please. It's 3:29
At the Public Market Museum on the
21st of June. On the wall are the robes
& red of dead men, the tall pretty
Boots and metals that have been
Scrupulously cleaned of grass stains,
Beer, blood, which is not to imply

Death or anything like it. I have been reading
War and Peace but now I'm not and instead
Can imagine the moaning, the clatter
Of horse hooves, the huh? as they tumble
With the sunlight tumbling
Over the grass, the snow. I drink

Some coffee. They are out of sugar,
So bitter black coffee & I think...
I think that the stain there on that
Breast pocket, the loose yarn
On a mitten, has become intolerable
So I say I'm leaving. I go to the drugstore
& get some pills. Come back
To the girl, whose name is Ruthie,
leaning with her back against the wall
& I think who would choose this for himself?
But we are all helpless to choose
And this is what they planned to do.

Robert Schecter

THE WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Willians as done by William Blake

Ah, Wheelbarrow! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of my load,
Raindrops are sparkling like stars in your grime
As the White Chicken crosses the road!

Why does the chicken pine with desire
To watch you on your ride?
Like a red wheelbarrow, chickens aspire
To what's on the other side.

Paul Stevens

Shall I compare thee to the red wheelbarrow?
...Thou art more rustie, sore thy painte doth peel;
Rough pathes do harrass thee with bump and furrow,
...And long neglecte besets thy squeaky wheel.
Sometimes too flatte thy tyre, thy axle loose,
...And often dried-up crud encrusts thy pan;
Oblivious to invective and abuse
...Thy wayward track defies the Will of Man.
For thy unnatural handles shall not steer
...Thee to thy destination uno'erturned,
Nor shall Bruce brag, as he sits drinking beer,
...That he to master thy queynte wayes hath learned:
.......So long as chicken squawkes, or rain descends,
.......Shall I curse you, on whom so much depends.

Colleen Russell

Uphill (Christina Rossetti)
with a boost from Dorothy Parker

DOES the road wind uphill all the way?
.No, life's a pleasure cruise.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
Just three pair of shoes.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
...... Well, that fellow's making passes...
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
...... My dear, re-don your glasses.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
...... You may hope to find a lad.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
...... Knock yourself, dear, you've been had.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
...... Love cures all things that pain you.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
...... Yes, and I am Marie of Roumania.

Paul Stevens

Red Barrow, be not proud, though some claim much
...On thee depends, for that it is not so,
...For, those that think that they can make thee go
Where they would steer, are wrong: thou wilt none such.
To crash, and all thy cargo forth to pitch,
...Much pleasures thee; spilt loads from thee do flow;
...No sooner pushed than thou dost o'erthrow
The rest of thy delivery to some ditch.
Unruly slave of gardeners, desperate men,
...Thou dost with glazing rain and chickens dwell;
...Prozac and ale do shield us from this Hell
Of wheeling feral loads; why gloatst thou then?
......Once back into the house, I'll crack a beer,
......Switch tv on, and thou shalt disappear.

Robert Schecter

RED WHEELBARROW
William Carlos Williams as done by Philip Levine


There’s a wheelbarrow in Detroit
that’s used for hauling dead chickens
through dusty alleys
between nightclubs where
my brother used to sneak
from his job to sip cool beer
and long for the blondes with too much red lipstick
on their powdered-white faces
as cigarettes glowed dangerously close to their tongues
before he would return undetected
to the loading dock where wheelbarrows
were the shoulders of brothers
and dead white chickens were bosses
standing back from the trucks as red veins flashed
in the whites of my brother’s eyes
glazed with dry tears
as he cursed in silence
and listened to his echo
fade into Detroit’s lost-and-found
where nothing is recovered but bitter fragments
of the treasures no one left behind,
and it is not my brother
but myself who pushes
the red wheelbarrow
beside the white chickens
turning grey in the alley
of hopeless, voiceless cries
in the silence of empty trucks
my brother goes on filling.

TO HIS COY MISTRESS
Andrew Marvell done by Basho Matsuo

....Time is like a bear
chasing us toward the shelter
....of today's passion.

DOROTHY PARKER PLATH

Razors pain you;
Guns are unlawful;
Acids stain you;
Gas is less awful.

Robert Schecter

DOROTHY PARKER SERVES CHICKEN
Dorothy Parker does Julia Child

Should you ask me for a breast,
...I swear I'll make you beg!
Once you do, if I'm impressed,
...I'll give you breast and leg!

After you consume each piece,
...Give me back the bone!
I'll wipe your face of all the grease,
...Then wipe some on my own!

David Wright

Gwendolyn Brooks

We Real Prufrock

We real depressed. We
get dressed. We
don't talk. We
just walk. We
don’t giggle. We
pin and wriggle. We
measure spoons. We
drown soon.

Robert Schecter

THE COMPLAINT
Dorothy Parker does Sharon Olds

It's not cunnilingus
With only the fingers.

Ivan Gabriel Rehorek

Tennyson does Prevert.

At each boundless mile
each portal year
old men dark with reason
point out the deeps and highs
with the vanishing spark
to children with gestures
of fiery clashing meteorites.

Betty N. Buckman

'the Rubaiyat of e. e. cummings'

VII

come, tap the drum, nowlethesunfiz Spring
pray, Isabel, toss coat and everything -
no bird poop's like no snowflake's like the
same (been studied by philosopher and king.)

VIII

at Woodstock or at Sammy Sosa's game
yuz experience the psychedilic same
should mud and slime go misdirect the pitch
xwifes klingon; while pitchers changes name.

IX

each morning swums new tadpoles in a ditch
oldheimers
ramble of the horse & hitch
AND this lst summer'z day lily I spy
is worser than the heat which is a bitch.

X

so, let it end then, what'v we to prove
with Clinton's #?;<)ways or Bushs' gooves?
leave politx play out and chugabeer.
get home and eat before your parents move.

XI

itz me, in cornfields I remember
Dear.
i'd hide and none'd ever find me here
not kids I like, nor those whose gutz I'd hate
nor even them we nowdays don't call queer.

XII

A book of poems - a shady branch, oh Grate!
but still 4 u & Sun Chips i will wait.
besides me humming tunes from Boyz to men
whoa!!! TheNoWhen -- like this recycled plate.

Staff Terese Coe

(Not an official entry)

Necessity (Langston Hughes) by John Skelton

To worke I goe
Albeit I knowe
I shoulde complayne
It is certayne.
With payne and woe
I heave the hoe
And bones do crake
But lyfte the rake
Though I woulde fayne
With Love remayne
And her vertew
Yet wryte anew.
I dream to kysse
Her face in blysse
But I be given
To gayne my livin
In everye gyse
That I despyse.

The Day Lady Died (O’Hara) by John Skelton

It now is 12:30
And I am stille dirtye
From making some monny
At MOMA, and honny,
You know that’s not sporte,
Don’t even retorte.
I’m due in Easthampton
To see Ladye Frampton
Who’s laying two dynners
For Kennel Club wynners.
The same folke who reade me
Invite me and feede me
But I buye Verlaine
Because he is sane.
I aske for a Strega
And fynde an Omega
Bowle to give Mike
That Patsy woulde lyke.
Gauloises in a carton
I shoppe for, they’ll hearten
First Patsy, then Mike,
And her gardener, Spike.
But seeing her face
On the cover of Ace
Makes me sweate quycker
And feel so much sycker
And goe for some brewe.
“Drynke whyle it’s new”
Sayeth bartender Lou,
So I’ll no further ryme
Of it at this tyme.

Anna Lynn Hammond

forgive me Richard Zola, for I have sinned (but, ya know, they do say imitation is the highest form of flattery )

(I hope doing Gaz poets is allowed)

...the wheelbarrow...red...

>>

isabella places a chicken
on her head

says cluck

cluck CLUCK cluck

isabella names her wheelbarrow
ruby

ruby says red

ruby says give me
a small red chicken

give me

a white wheelbarrow

isabella says ruby
im sorry dear ruby

isabella touches strokes
rubys glazed wheels

im sorry ruby
all i have is rain

and fish
with open mouths

Melanie McConnell

Emily Dickinson as done by Jack Kerouac

Untitled Song

This is my poem to the world,
that never wrote poetry to me--
275,000,000,000 poems written,
two hundred and seventy-five billion.
O j o!

The hot dogs cooked
by hands I cannot see;
Like Unending
Heaven
and apple trees.
Countrymen, write for me!

Robert Schecter

RED WHEELBARROW
as done by Omar Khayyam as done by Edward Fitzgerald

The Red Wheelbarrow sits; and, as it sits,
Stays put: nor all thy Rain and Chicken Shit
Shall lure its Wheels to rotate half a Turn,
Nor all thy Poems find one true Word in it.

Don Zirilli

Red Wheelbarrow
as done by Joan Crawford
dedicated to Mr. Schechter

No more red wheelbarrows EVER!!

Robert Schecter

Don,

When it comes to writing biographies,
there's none like Robert Caro,

and when it comes to trial law,
there's none like Clarence Darrow,

and none surpasses William Tell
when it comes to shooting an arrow,

but William Carlos Williams rules
the land of the red wheelbarrow.

M.A. Griffiths

(Edward Lear/Philip Larkin)

How pleasant to know Mr Larkin
Who has written such volumes of stuff,
Who partook of Earl Grey and parkin
And declined to be seen in the buff.

His manners were British and donnish
(One won't wear one's heart on one's sleeve),
Traits that a Yank might admonish,
Asking, What does this blighter believe?

Some delved in laundry and letters
For a cad with promiscuous needs
But sex clamps us all in its fetters,
And he left us his words, not his deeds.

It's rumoured that Larkin was clever,
So perhaps, in the end, it is best,
To let his words speak out forever,
While the poet enjoys his long rest.

They say he loathed wogs, blacks and Zion,
When bigoted push came to shove,
But his verse shows what humans rely on:
The almost-ascendence of Love.