How Pleasant to Know Mr. Shelley (Version 1)
How pleasant to know Mr. Shelley,
A man I had lunch with one time.
(We had Bagels sans lox at Mo’s Deli).
Between crunches he read me a rhyme
Based on walking one dawn in a park.
He’d glimpsed Venus and heard a bird’s song
More divine than a rainbow, a lark,
Unseen, yet its voice was so strong!
He had found a nice bench, wrote a verse
About poet-as-bird. Quite appealing,
I thought, and said, “Friend, I’ve heard worse.
Suffused with a schooner of feeling.”
Though he drowned in the briny (no mystery),
His verses still live in the belly
Of that mottled blue whale we call History.
How pleasant to know Mr. Shelley!
***
How Pleasant to Know Mr. Shelley (Version 2)
How pleasant to know Mr. Shelley,
A fellow I sat with at lunch.
(We had Bagels sans lox at Mo’s Deli).
Between crunches, he said, “Now that bunch
Of God-fearing folk and flesh-addicts
Has got on my nerves.” So he wrote
Unconventional rhymes, acrobatics
Of mind yielding poems of note.
The next dawn, as we strolled through a park,
We glimpsed Venus and heard a bird’s song
More divine than a rainbow, a lark,
Unseen, yet its voice was so strong!
My pal found a bench, wrote a rhyme
About poet-as-bird. Though his belly
Was empty, his thoughts were sublime.
How pleasant to know Mr. Shelley!
Last edited by Martin Elster; 09-22-2009 at 02:53 PM.
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