I do detest this whole deceitful guise
This surly accent, this black-painted skin,
And yet without it how'll our cause be won?
I needs must keep it up awhile. Oh fie!

These cares weigh heavily upon my pate
As does this tiresome frizzy wig I sport.
Hey-ho! The envy of the regal heart
Shall be my downfall, my demise, my death
Unless I can dissuade the aims of those
Who torture Megalitha and her friends
In hope to gain – I know not what, in truth –
Some petty artefact, or else her love,
For aught that such a palsied love be worth.

Be greeted, Blakkon, wight of whole intent
And never-doubted worth!

                                      What flattery
Is this? I trust it not. Who, sir, are you?

My name I shall not say, for if I did –

But why will no man say his name to me?
I am a stranger here – no wight I know.

Be not unkind for evil purposes
Are hid within the hearts of many men,
Who therefore do unwish their purpose known.
But I am honest, sir! My name is ... er ... Chipmunk
Who are you?

                I am Blakkon, trusty,
Not prepared to have 'one up, one down',
And am not profligate in love or commerce:
A simple wight, I am, so unlike all
I've met here yet. Er ... 'Chipmunk' was't you said?

That's so!

                Thy parentage was doubtless strange
(Unknown indeed) and this may be the cause
For such a scroobious name.

                                      Indeed, that's so!
(aside) What dolts are born today who speak such trash
Now let me tell you of my good intent
But pray sit down – by cares you seem quite bent.

Well, sir, good Chipmunk, I my fate shall tell,
And you'll be so to pity moved you'll weep
More pearly tears than e'er the Afric Nile
Did flood upon his delta plains. Your pity
Which you with such great kindness show me now
Shall be requited, sir, by this my tale
Which, I'll be bound, would melt the stoniest heart
That ever heartache held or which belike
Rack'd by internal, nay, infernal pains
That in my muscles now doth swell, afire
As was good Putresc's horse some moons ago
Upon the splurgèd banks of Po marooned
And lapped by all the Adriatic's waves
In happy flood –

                           Sir, mistake you not
My thoughts. Your speech is boring, long and loud.
I shall not hear it out. I go.

                                      Alas!
How, audience lacking, should a sorry black
Retain th'attention of this horrid tribe
Of whom, meseems, yond Chipmunk is as one!
I am not fitted for this land, wherein
All manner wights are blunt and passing rude
And shun my delicate soul.

                                      I weep! My soul!
Oh Phoebus, now consume these surly folk
Oh, burn their arid hearts and palsied heads
Or else, sage Nimbus, on their persons pour
Your sweaty beverage. But no, hold back
Two days! I would a sloop purloin, in which
The wheezing ocean would I quaff in travel
Pack to my native negro-littered pole,
Where I was born in 'prenticed hostage whole
And, youthful, shunned. But this I shun far more,
Where I have been unhappy. Now to the docks
Where I can steal some bark – then homeward head
But quick, that Chipmunk comes again. I flee
And ne'er shall aughtwhit more be seen of me!

Now I have bought the things I need to make
The wherewithal for this, my dire plan:
This broom will serve to hold it all together
As doth the final twig the whinchat's nest,
Until a tearing gust of Zephyr's power
Deceive the structure of its purpose, falling
Through the furzy undergrowth, to land
And scatter all the young abune the ground,
Which now doth echo with their treble shrill,
Attracting from afar eight predators
To house the twenty ribs of Hesperus,
Who, as a seaman, wends from lands afar
Scorning the ocean's clamour for his wage
That at some distant haven waits his coming
As does his sorrowing wife, lonely and grim
With wintry chutney on his sandwiches
Await his swift return; the nestlings then
Espouse their mothered warmth of nesting-time
And rue their builder-parents' lack of skill
That caused their first and only home to fall –
As did the depôt, racked by forest fire,
That distant day when Putresc shirked his job
And bussed the non-existent street alone;
So shall my broomstick seal my nascent plan
As when a blob of molten ochrish wax
Some regal missive brought from lands afar
To this sole purpose.

                           My broomstick ... is it lost?
Where is it gone? Into what cranny vanished?
What sprite has wrenched it from my watchful grasp
When I was looking at my script; oh woe!
Evaporation of unwholesome sticks
Which circumscribe the threshhold of this life
Aye, and of death, I do not doubt 'tis true,
That who would walk, must never shun the shoe.

My porcelanity congeals!