Here the undirected remark is forbidden
and some have declared, not unjustly, that
such clowning in this day and age is atrocious.
To those who adore no rose: have a peach, I say!
Let us do away with that prickly beau,
that thorny arbitrator of a meter’s fall –
metonymy’s implicated mongrel – and let
us replace him with the orchard’s best pick.
A fuzzy fellow – something between ripe and sere.
Or perhaps with something thickly corrugated,
yielding its honeyed milk only to the
least penitent supplicant, who will not mince his
words with a preening metaphor derived from this
ghastly pageantry, this ritualized
bacchanal of an untoward Dionysis!
[Previous: Eager in the Wing]
[Next: Poor Pindar]