Yeah, Janet. I'm glad you like it and, frankly, so do I. And, no, it wouldn't have come without the sestina form. The same is true, I'm sure, of the Auden one about the vats. He conjured it out of a bunch of six words. I think I mightlike to try the Swinburne test - write a rhymed sestina. I've always felt Swinburne is underrated. He took rhyme and metre to places no-one els did - except W.S. Gilbert, (another true poet and better than Swinburne). In my view the poets and the artists since then have far too often committed the Treason of the Clerks and sold out to the Powerful. You see them trotting along behind the fascists of the right and left, mostly left these days since Adolf was seen off so comprehensively AND NOT BY THEM. Perhaps I am ranting a bit but the forts are in enemy hands here and in the Antipodes. Dammit you have to go to the United States to find Eratosphere.
It was my old boss, not many inches from a crook, but a man I worked for for a dozen unforgettable years (unforgettable however hard I try heh heh), who gave me that shit showered and shaved thing - just waiting for a poem to put them in. He also had this little mantra before he left the house or the office of the country. Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch, Not orignal, I'm sure, but what mastery of form! Three dactyls and a final thump.
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