a fragment


  1. Ripe and yet unsubtle were his weary ways.

Listen to reading


Ripe and yet unsubtle were his weary ways.
Noone dared to drive him from his home.
A purple fate hung o'er his ear,
Drab and drear, O, drab and drear.
I wot not if he were a gnome;
Rare and barely elvish were his dreary days,
O, weary days!

But, though she sought to launder all her garments in the foam
She wept, and read strange curses from an ancient, crumbling tome.
The curse was terse. The clothes were soiled with Peat (some call it Loam).
She telephoned: an urgent call to Auntie Meg in Rome;
The Pythia pretended that the lines were all engaged,
And thus our gorgeous heroine by years and years she aged,
While pushing stones up mountains, thirsty Syphilis assuaged,
Who at this distorted myth was horribly enraged ....


©1973, 1999 The Rat Fathom Poets
Edited by Peter Christian
May 31 2023.