Mystery. R.P.Lister.
 

The Mystery of R.P.Lister.

I found “The Revolutionaries” by accident, picking up a second-hand copy of the 1978 New Oxford Book of Light Verse chosen and edited by Kingsley Amis. I had never heard of R.P.Lister, but it struck me how snugly he would fit in to this "Robespierre" thread and this Sphere.

I went in search but could Google little biographical information.Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in 1914...so he must be in his late nineties if still alive. Perhaps living in Australia now. I have found no trace of an obituary. He is described as “travel writer, poet, novelist.” He appears to have been widely published in the fifties, sixties and seventies. I have the New Yorker link, Janice, and it is tantalising. Does anyone have their subscription to this archive and can access these poems?

I have ordered a copy of his book “The Questing Beast”. It’s only a few pounds, but I have no idea what it is: poetry, travel or fiction.

His books of poems include “Allotments”, “The Rhyme and the Reason”; his novels “One Short Summer”, “Rebecca Redfern”, and books on Herodotus, Ghengis Khan and travels in Turkey.

Does anyone know any more?

Thanks.Steve.

Silent Books.
 

Just found this at the British Library.Rushing off to work now.



Record number : 1
Lister, R. P. The Albatross and other poems / (London : Dorricott, 1986.)


Record number : 2
Lister, R. P. Allotments / (Andoversford : Whittington, 1985.)


Record number : 3
Lister, R. P. Glimpses of a planet / (London : Pauline Dorricott Books, 1997.)


Record number : 4
Lister, R. P. The idle demon : a collection of verses. (Deutsch, 1958.)


Record number : 5
LISTER, Richard Percival. The Idle Demon. A collection of verses. (pp. 112. Andre Deutsch: London, 1958.)

Record number : 6
LISTER, Richard Percival. A Journey in Lapland. The hard way to Haparanda. [With illustrations by the author.] (pp. 256. Chapman & Hall: London, 1965.)


Record number : 7
Bagnold, Enid. Letters to Frank Harris, & other friends/ (Andoversford: Whittington Press & Heinemann, c1980.)
Eccles 916.
Cup.510.dga.33

Record number : 8
Lister, R. P. Marco Polo's travels in Xanadu with Kublai Khan / (London : Gordon and Cremonesi, 1976.)


Record number : 9
Lister, R. P. Me and the Holy Spirit / (London : Pauline Dorricott Books, 1999.)


Record number : 10
Lister, R. P. Nine legends. (Pauline Dorricott, 1991.)


Record number : 11
LISTER, Richard Percival. One short summer. (Aylesbury: Milton House Books, 1974.)


Record number : 12
LISTER, Richard Percival. The Oyster and the Torpedo. (pp. 254. Jonathan Cape: London, 1951.)


Record number : 13
LISTER, Richard Percival. The Questing Beast. (pp. 229. Chapman & Hall: London, 1965.)


Record number : 14
LISTER, Richard Percival. Rebecca Redfern. (pp. 220. Andre Deutsch: London, 1953.)


Record number : 15
LISTER, Richard Percival. The Rhyme and the Reason. (pp. 246. Victor Gollancz: London, 1963.)


Record number : 16
LISTER, Richard Percival. The secret history of Genghis Khan. (London: Peter Davies, 1969.)
X.709/8979.
T 24554
W34/1999 (0432086803)

Record number : 17
Lister, R. P. The travels of Herodotus / (London : Gordon and Cremonesi, 1979.)
X.802/11107 (0860330818 :)

Record number : 18
Lister, R. P. Turkey observed / (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967.)
W77/0564

Record number : 19
LISTER, Richard Percival. Turkey observed. With illustrations by the author. (pp. 271. Eyre & Spottiswoode: London, 1967.)
X.809/4075.

Record number : 20
Lister, R. P. Two northern stories / (London : Pauline Dorricott, 1996.)

Record number : 21
LISTER, Richard Percival. The Way backwards. [A novel.] (pp. 252. Collins: London, 1950.)

Good detective work, Steve.

Alas, my subscription to the New Yorker just ran out and I decided to use my limited funds to support or subscribe to a few literary journals instead.

I hope we have some more detectives on the trail of R.P. Lister.

You'll have to enlarge these if you can access them:

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1973-03-24#folio=042

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/196...ARDS_000278890

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1965-12-25#folio=061

Nope. Except The Questing Beast must be a joke at Malory's expense... :)

And there's this:

LAMENT OF AN IDLE DEMON
R.P. Lister (1914- )
It's quiet in Hell just now, it's very tame.
The devils and the damned alike like snoring.
Just a faint smell of sulphur, not much flame;
The human souls come here and find it boring.

Satan, the poor old Puritan, sits there
Emitting mocking laughter once a minute.
Idly he scans a page of Baudelaire
And wonders how he once saw evil in it.

He sips his brimstone at the Demons' Club
(His one amusement now he's superseded)
And keeps complaining to Beelzebub
That men make hotter hells than ever he did.



Thanks,

Bill

I Thought I Saw Stars
By: R.P. Lister

I thought I saw stars, when first I saw your eyes,
So luminous they were , and such an enormous size;
I fell on the floor and foamed at the mouth, with inconsequential cries
Now, when I look in your eyes, I do not flinch;
Heaven forgive me, I am not even tempted to lynch
The men who, standing beside you, display an inclination to pinch
For this insensitivity may I be pardoned,
I looked in your eyes too often, and in the end became hardened,
There came a day when Adam turned his back upon Eve, and gardened.

The tally of Lister pieces is mounting it seems. 'Defenestration' was included in J.M.Cohen's Yet More Comic And Curious Verse Penguin 1959, reprinted 1964, but there is no acknowledgement to the New Yorker, where it appeared in the issue for Sept 16th 1956.

'Taxidermy' was in Punch in April 1965, but I don't know the exact issue date.

His New Yorker heyday seems to have been the 1950s, with 58 poems in the decade. There were 12 in the 1960s up to 1966, and then a solitary straggler in 1973.

Those collections might be worth looking for.

Demonstrating Defenestration.
 

Thanks for all efforts. His poems seem fine light verse, at the very least, with some mysterious extra ingredient. I have found this copy of "Defenestration" in some student's dissertation on comic verse, so I cannot vouch for its accuracy. The name/character McIndoe seems oddly familiar. I will have to get back to more research. I can find no other reference to "Pauline Dorricott Books" as a publisher.

DEFENESTRATION

I once had the honour of meeting a philosopher called McIndoe
Who had once had the honour of being flung out of an upstairs window.
During his flight, he said, he commenced an interesting train of speculation
On why there happened to be such a word as defenestration.
There is not a special word for being rolled down a roof into a gutter;
There is no verb to describe the action of beating a man to death with a putter;
No adjective exists to qualify a man bound to the buffer of the 12.10 to Ealing,
No abstract noun to mollify a man hung upside down by his ankles from the ceiling.
Why, then, of all the possible offences so distressing to humanitarians,
Should this one alone have caught the attention of the verbarians?
I concluded (said McIndoe) that the incidence of logodaedaly was purely adventitious.
About a thirtieth of a second later, I landed in a bush that my great-aunt brought back from Mauritius.
I am aware (he said) that defenestration is not limited to the flinging of men through the window.
On this occasion, however, it was limited, the object defenestrated being, I, the philosopher, McIndoe.

R.P.Lister.

Logodaedaly! What a wonderful word! Steve.

That is hilarious, Steve! I cannot stop laughing! This is wonderful stuff. I love the last line of "I thought I saw stars", too!

Amazing comic flair, this Mister Lister.

Cally

A couple of minor differences in the text I have:

L5 There is not, he said, a special word for being rolled down a roof into a gutter;

LL14 On this occasion, however, it was so limited, the object defenestrated being I, the philosopher, McIndoe.

I'll add to the rapidly-assembling corpus with 'Taxidermy' when I have more time.

Taxidermy R.P. Lister
 

TAXIDERMY

The trouble is with taxidermy
That creatures stuffed with loving care
Become, in future ages, wormy,
And fall to pieces in the air.


The most obese and lifelike beaver
Stuffed by Tim Pettigrew of Penge,
Will vanish like a passing fever
Compared with Byblos or Stonehenge.

The taxidermist's art is vagrant,
A fleeting thing that fades too soon,
Condemned to wither, like the fragrant
Roses beneath the summer moon.

Those moles and ferrets, elks and vipers,
Though stuffed apparently to stay
Are like the airs of distant pipers
That mercifully fade away.

Where are they now, the cunning foxes,
The lovebirds in their glassy case?
Turned rotten at the core, like Coxes
Kept in an injudicious place.

The leopards, tastefully engladed,
The coy koalas, short and stout -
Their fur is by the moth invaded,
Their beady little eyes drop out.

How fleet of Finnish foot was Nurmi!
How lissom Lenglen on the court!
And so it is with taxidermy;
Not only life, but art is short.


Punch April 1965

How fleet of Finnish foot was Nurmi!

How nice to see Nurmi immortalized in a poem. As the Bard said "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Moreover it is an excellent verse.

More Listerology, Listerania, Listermania.
 

Thanks Jerome! Thanks R.P!

What a wonderful poem, stuffed full of delights.
I am heading deeper into the mystery; I plan to visit the British Library next week to look at some of R.P's books.(I had to choose three.) I'm in search of more biographical background on him.

"Not only life, but art is short." What irony in that last line, when you consider that he was born in 1914 and may be 96 now!

"How lissom Lenglen on the court!" Ha! Better than Betjeman!

That poem, 'Taxidermy' is art. Is it great art. Is Tom and Jerry great art. I would say yes, one of America's two most important contributions to popular art in the 20th century. The other is Louis Armstrong. Lister's poem is very good art indeed.

Investigations
 

My quest for R.P.Lister continues. I am going down with my wife Adrienne.(Ariadne and Theseus ?) next Tuesday to the British Library. I have registered as a reader and asked to look at “Allotments”, “Rebecca Redfern” and “Me and the Holy Spirit.” We also intend to look at the current “Maps” exhibition.

Thanks David, but even enlarged and squinted at through a magnifying glass the New Yorker pieces are unreadable. It looks like its Subscription or nothing.

Thanks Bill, where did you find those?

Meanwhile I’m reprinting his poem from the 1978 Oxford Book of Light Verse in this thread for those who may have missed it. Does no one own a book by Richard Percival Lister yet?

The Revolutionaries.

O tremble all you earthly Princes,
Bow down the crowned and chrism'd nob;
Wise is the Potentate that winces
At the just clamour of the mob.

Shiver, ye bishops, doff your mitres,
Huddle between your empty pews
Here comes a horde of left- wing writers
Brandishing salmon-pink reviews.

Comes the New Age, Your outworn faces
Vanish at our enlightened curse,
While we erect in your old places
Something considerably worse.

The Beast Arrives.
 

Good news and bad news. Today I am the proud owner of the novel “The Questing Beast” by R.P.Lister, published by Chapman and Hall, London 1965. The bad news is that there is not a scrap of biographical information on the book jacket. Does the man have a Salinger complex (pre-dating Salinger)?

This is the blurb from the jacket...

“It is through the ironic eyes of Michael Mendel, jovial “king of film”, that we view in this novel the feckless progress of Pellinew. Invalided out of the army in the early part of the last war, Pellinew becomes a civilian in London. He is a man apparently without aim or ambition, innocent and impulsive in the conduct of his life. Unequipped as he seems to face the rigours of wartime London (and reader will realise, from Mr.Lister’s admirable evocation, that wartime London is more than just the setting of this book) he continually surprises. He surprises by his jobs, which are always fatuous and yet clearly satisfy him; by his friendships – with Mendel himself; with Waterfield, a radical intellectual editor; with Dinnock, an enquiring American psychiatrist for whom, absurdly, Pellinew types. But above all, Pellinew surprises us by his attachments. His attraction for women is difficult to understand. Marie is beautiful, clever and sophisticated; Elaine is pretty, nice and rather silly. Both these women, widely different in every aspect, want Pellinew; his reaction to them, which is unassuming and sublime, is somehow quite appropriate.

The Questing Beast is a relaxed book. Intricately worked out, it reads with deceptive simplicity. Mr. Lister’s characters are all perfectly realised, and they interact upon each other in just the right way."

I like that! “A relaxed book”. Just what I need.

Against the door.
 

Today I received THe Idle Demon by R.P.Lister Andre Deutsch 1958. It is stuffed full of treasures originally published in Punch, The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. Once again there is no biographical information. I have never met a more secretive or self-effacing writer!
Here’s one that seems apt:

How Not To Deal With Closed Doors.

I dashed my head against a door,
And one of us was hurt the more.
Either the door, that is, or I.
I know that men and doors must die,
And none of us can live forever.
That is the worst of being clever.

I take all knowledge for my realm,
And grasp, if anything, the helm,
And sail my ship of phantom spars
Into a glowing mist of stars.
Crashing at last to parent earth,
I wonder what the trip was worth.

The truth is, I was never born.
I am a kind of unicorn,
Bred for the never-never land
Where no one tries to understand.
I cannot cope with solid matter,
Or else I should have grown much fatter.

Around the corner, as I stare,
Lies the non-nascent everywhere.
I think about the days gone by,
The time to live, the time to die.
I dash my head against the door,
And one of us is hurt the more.

I must go onto Amazon and look for this. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Steve. I think I need an idle demon hanging around in my bookshelves. Thank heavens for ABE Books!

For you, sis.
 

SIster, Come Soon

Sister, come soon, come soon, this is the house you seek,
Come today or come tomorrow or come next week,
The garden gate is unbolted and the door ajar;
Come early, come early my star.

Do not delay, sister, time is not standing still,
The leaves turn brown on the trees and the moorbirds honk on the hill,
Jupiter peers at me boldly with beady eye;
Sister draw nigh.

Sister, the bridal gown lies fading in Father’s trunk,
The little boys are away and the wine is drunk,
The Post Office man has taken away the telephone;
Come early, come early, my own.

Come as I lie in bed and lay your hand on my brow,
Once it was petal-smooth, rhinoceros-wrinkled now;
We shall sit at evening watching dim embers burn.
O sister, return.

Lank grows the grass in the yard that the goats of childhood cropped,
The roof has fallen in and the clocks have stopped.
Time has destroyed it all, all that Time can destroy;
Come early, come early my joy.

R.P.Lister. 1914-

Address!
 

Amazing discoveries now.

From 2004 International Who's Who of Writers:

Richard Percival Lister. Born 23 November 1914, Nottingham, England. Author, poet, painter. Married to Ione Mary Wynnatt Husey 24th June 1985!
Education: BSc. Manchester University.

Address! Flat 1. 42 St.James Gardens, London W11 4RQ !

I shall write to him...I shall go and knock on his door!

Thank you for your efforts here, Steve.

We should come up with a Wikipedia entry for him.

Do it!
 

Thanks Ed, that sounds like a good idea. Of course I realise I should not rush in where I may not be wanted. I have emailed the almshouses where he may be still living, asking their permission to contact him. His novel The Questing Beast is also turning out to be a stunningly good read. I am in awe of his liveliness, wit and writing skill.I think some publisher would benefit from rediscovering his poetry and novels.

Ballade. R.P.Lister.
 

Ballade on Experience

I am not quite as lonely as a cloud,
My heart is not quite like a singing bird,
My head is neither bloody nor unbowed;
This state of things is totally absurd,
For all the poets of whom I ever heard
Were either phthisical or deep in debt,
Still, these delights grow riper when deferred-
Everything has not happened to me yet.

When I am wrapped in my natty shroud,
Nailed in a shiny coffin, and interred,
The little worms and parasites will crowd
To graze upon me in a hungry herd.
I shall not speak, I shall not say a word,
I shall not utter one reproach or threat,
For from their actions this may be inferred-
Everything has not happened to me yet.

Within the tent of Suleiman bin Daoud
The high-born cats sat round about and purred.
One read the Psalms of David out aloud,
One softly played the rebeck , and a third
Sniffed at a bowl of steaming punch, and stirred
The amber liquor with a spoon of jet.
I was not present when this scene occurred-
Everything has not happened to me yet.

Most noble Prince, empanoplied and spurred,
Do not despair because we have not met;
Although my back is bent, my vision blurred,
Everything has not happened to me yet.

I'm enjoying these poems very much, and so I feel terribly ogre-like when I remind you all that posting material--especially whole poems--that might be copyrighted to a living person or that person's publisher is, well, a vexed question. We've vexed ourselves over it often, and we usually end up saying, "What's the problem? We're discussing the poems." So let's do make sure we're discussing the poems.

Metamorphosing back into non-ogre form now.

Thanks, Maryann.
 

Thanks for the reminder, Maryann. I think that's enough typing for me. I wanted to do it because I think Lister has been lost from view. On the Deutsch dust-jacket he is "listed"..."listered?"... with Stevie Smith, Roy Fuller, David Wright, Laurie Lee, Elizabeth Jennings, David Gascoyne and H.D., all of whom I have heard of and read. Why has Lister disappeared? Was he considered Light, old fashioned, formalist? He certainly wouldn't have fitted into the 60's London literary scene.Yet his work seems fresh, funny, with "hidden depths". I'm hoping others will get interested and seek out these very entertaining books. For the formal versemeisters (is that even a word?) they look like essential inspiration.

From The British Library.
 

Ha! (as Sergio would say)

I am sitting in the splendid British Library learning more about R.P. Lister and the meaning of life.

I'll let R.P. say a few words:

"So let us, in our failure and obscurity
Enjoy our life in moderate impurity.
I have a fancy it may soon be dark,
So I must go and potter round the Park."

Steve.

A worthwhile and exciting quest, from the discovery of the first fewmets to the location of the very lair. May the final discovery not be a sad one.

Steve, thank you for the service you are doing for us and R.P.L. That ballade again strikes his individual note of lightness, deftness, cultivation and . . . a hint of another ingredient. Fascinating. What puzzles me is why he was, apparently, so little anthologised.

I've come across a mention of a book of his called The Oyster and The
Torpedo. Any idea if this is a verse collection?

Ah, I now see The Oyster and The Torpedo was in that British Library holdings list you posted, Steve.

Score beginning to look like around five novels, six or more travel books, possibly seven collections of verse?

A Conversation with Richard Lister.
 

Visiting Mr.Lister.

I enjoy my initiation into The British Library. I sign in at the registration desk. No coats allowed, no bags except clear plastic, no sharp objects...no pens! I have to go and buy myself a pencil from the shop! Then I have my photo taken (I look smug and beardy and pleased with myself) and they give me my Reader’s card. “Researching The World’s Knowledge” it says on the plastic card.

The most remarkable book I have ordered turns out to be “Me and the Holy Spirit” 1999, Pauline Dorricott Books. It is A4 in format and looks like a self-published book to me, which explains why I can find little trace of P.D. as a publisher.

The book is a humorous meditation on the Trinity, and why R.P. prefers the Holy Ghost to the other two. He likes the way all it seems to do is to, sometimes, fill people, or, sometimes ,not. Yet he feels it as “some pervasive influence in the universe.”

But what the book also talks to me about is how Mr.Lister is, or how he felt in 1999. He asks himself at one point: “What is left to me?” He answers:

“Reasonably good health at an enormous age; dozens of loving friends; a love of music in an age when it is on tap in the home at all hours; a taste for writing and painting and the ability to make a small but sufficient living if necessary; a small and unexpected legacy making it unnecessary to make a living at either, so that I can do both simply for fun; an agreeable, if rather small flat in W11 fifteen minutes walk from the park.
Few princes can have had so much to enjoy and so little to fear or resent.”

He talks about how, as a writer, although he made a living up to the 1980’s he was “never part of a Circle”, and feels that it has been this “lack of Circularity” that has seen his reputation sink away.

As I read I think of his description of his character Pellinew, from “The Questing Beast”: “Talking to Pellinew, you sometimes forgot that the world was real, and that its needs, in the way of rent or food, had to be attended to.”

I can imagine the friends of R.P. feeling the same way. I felt the same way surrounded by the purposeful hush of the great library. I look up for the first time and find a dark-haired girl scribbling at the next table. When I ask to borrow her pencil-sharpener she looks up briefly and whispers “Yes.” Sharpened, I continue to pencil more of R.P.’s words.

Now he seems to be talking directly to me:”about the age 55, when times were really rather hard, I decided that the only way of coping with life was to accept (as gladly as I could manage) what was sent and make the best of it. And this principle has served me so well that I am in no mind to abandon it.” I realise that I will be 55 in November this year a day before R.P. turns 96...I think he would be laughing at me now...

Our “conversation” continued for most of the afternoon. I learned more about his life. A failed first marriage, but then from the age of 70 t0 74 “four very happy years” with Ione. Then Ione died of cancer leaving R.P. without a partner again. He laments that he has spent a greater part of his life without this close companionship and love.

He writes movingly in “The Questing Beast”: “When you are possessed by a longing for someone in this way, the whole of life relates itself to that one, important thing. Then, in the course of time, the feeling dies away, and you can no longer recapture the greatness and reality of it.”
I enjoyed my afternoon in The British Library, deep in conversation with R.P. At the end of “Holy Spirit” he says that if there is a heaven he will not be “one of the saints” who go marching in. I feel sure that he would be among the princes, and that his princess, Ione, would be waiting impatiently for him.

Yet I hope he has many more years and is still able to “potter” round St.James’s Park chuckling to himself as he puts together another line of his sparkling verse.

Oh, and at the end he told me the meaning of life. What is it?
“It has none. Not of itself. You put your own meaning into it; and that is its meaning. Or if you say it is meaningless, so it is.”

This entire adventure is utterly enthralling! I love everything about him, especially his lack of circularity!

So he lives?? Lister lives?

His meaning of life reminds me firmly of Blake's dictum: As a man is, so he sees.

Wonderful YOU, Steve, for giving all this to us!

Cally

My (uncorrected advance proof) copy of The Oxford Book of Comic Verse (1994) has only two (2) items by Lister (1914 - ): 'A Toast to 2,000' and 'A Mind Reborn in Streatham Common'. He was born the same year as Dylan Thomas, John Berryman, and Henry Reed ('Naming of Parts' and 'Chard Whitlow' - a parody of Eliot). I think the comma in the first title would have been proofread out. Whoever did some proofing on this poem was very haphazard. Anyway, there is no 'The Revolutionaries', and the 'Toast' poem isn't on-line, so here it is for our ever-living poet in 2010 :

     A Toast to 2000

The century's no longer new;
The years to come seem very few.
Twenties and thirties, forties gone,
And now the fifties rumble on.
No use to grumble or repine,
The century's in its decline.

Now dawns upon the turning page
The fin-de-siècle, stuffy age.
Young men and maidens of this time
Will be the pillars of its prime;
These jocund children, bald and stout,
Will see its last convulsions out.

And we who saw the thirties through,
The hungry forties suffered too,
May linger, grey and comatose,
Within a few years of its close;
But not behold the strange new years
Charged with fresh follies and fresh fears.

Yet some Victorian, shrunk and thin,
Will see the year 2000 in ---
With fumbling mind, but changeless mien
Will ponder on the dear old Queen,
Under whose reign he first beheld
The frightening world, and wisely yelled.

There will he sit like any ghost
And drink to that New Year a toast,
Toast given by some pompous bore
At present playing on the shore.
Well may that centenarian fail
To grasp the meaning of the tale.

Questing
 

Steve,
Many others have thanked you before this, but, from me: Thank you so much for this thread, and for the tremendous amount of research (and sleuthing) you've done. I am so tickled by R.P.s poetry, and fascinated by what you've shared from his books. With your well-written and interesting posts, you've brought Lister's humor and playfulness, as well as his deeper insights to my attention, and now I'm a fan, of both him and you.

I was hoping you would let us travel along with you on your library adventure, and you did not disappoint! I'm now searching for my own copy of Questing Beast, and wish that I could take a peek at your penciled notes on “Me and the Holy Spirit.”

I'm a sucker for such simple, yet profound, wisdom! A great gift you've given me here, Steve.
Thanks,
Stephenie

Thank you again, Steve, for a remarkable and memorable post.

Some snippets from trawling booksellers on-line:

The Bsc perhaps ties up with the early piece below. 'The Rhyme and the Resaon' is on the theme of science and poetry. The music ties up with his writing the words for a mixed chorus and piano piece 'Felicity of the Animal World'. Among the novels seems to be 'Two Northern Stories' and possibly 'Good Wives'. There is also 'Nine Legends' 1991. 'A Muezzin From The Tower Of Darkness Cries' may be the American edition of 'Turkey Observed'. 'Allotments' appeared again in a very limited luxury edition in 1991 with a foreword by Alan Titchmarsh, the ubiquitous British gardening guru. There's a 20 page introduction to 'Gengis Khan' about the Mongolian language and RPL's research methods.

The Origin of Species
by R. P. Lister, 1948

At the bottom of a chasm
Long before the birth of Time
Lay a piece of protoplasm
In the paleozoic slime.

The mud flats oozed and bubbled,
And the vapors swirled and stank;
But his conscience was untroubled,
For he neither smoked nor drank.

The air was full of acid
And he breathed it all day long,
But his thoughts were calm and placid
For he never done no wrong.

Very humble was his station
He had never heard of Wells
Yet he fathered all creation
By the splitting of his cells.

Every nation small or splendid
(Even when of Nordic blood)
Is in point of fact descended
From that simple lump of mud.

From that humble organ's splitting
Came both crocodile and cow
Yet I cannot help admitting
They are very different now.

I'd like to point out that, for me, the greater part of my pleasure in this adventure lies is the easy grace of Steve's narration. Each entry in his diary of discovery has been a joy to read and I salute his craftsmanship. Thank you Steve, not just for the story but for the skill of the telling.

Listers seem to crop up everywhere onced you are sensitised. The following is from a geology site. Perhaps some Eratogeologist can tell us what the technical terms are about. (I hope that's enough discussion, Maryann.)

Incidentally, crops up in the London Gazette for April 1945 as an 'Honorary Flight Lieutenant' (if I've understood the entry correctly) so may have been in the RAF in the war.

The Judgement, by R.P. Lister, 1960

I dreamed the judgement came to me by night
They stood around my bed, severe of mien
And asked one question “what is enstatite?”

“It is an orthorhombic pyroxene,”
I said, and as I spoke I heard the jangle
Of planets crashing down the cosmic seas.

I added hastily: “It’s cleavage angle
is eighty-seven (more or less) degrees.
If it were fifty-six, not eighty-seven

We should, quite clearly, have an amphibole.”
At this they swept me, singing up to heaven,
Where angels’ hands received my battered soul.