We should never take the name of cheeses in vain. What Chesterton began R L Stevenson developed, until...
Ben Gunn Weeps
“Tell me, shipmates, do you perchance have cheese
aboard this vessel?” When they said they did
he wept a little, and when he was asked
to name his favourite, whispered “Wensleydale”.
And then he dreamed again; this time with hope.
Now he could see the cheese, wrapped in its muslin,
close-crafted by a time-served artisan.
Perhaps a little mould, as they unwrapped it,
would fall like green tears on the wooden board.
Oh, knife or wire? How would they cut his piece;
his piece of eight, his piece of Wensleydale?
He saw it falling painlessly away
from the white, crumbling side of a soft cliff.
He tasted it, one salty nutty lump
at a slow, timeless time. His fingers dabbed
at its imaginary crumbs, anticipating.
But while he was away in Paradise,
the world had turned to show a sadder side;
the predatory short term interest
of the financial sector had changed cheese
till it capered to the hornpipe of novelty,
short shelf-life, arbitrary innovation,
all the cut corners of the swift turnover,
the quest for the discretionary buck.
They brought a pallid slab, shrink-wrapped in plastic,
sleek and damp and beshitten with cranberries.
His toothless mouth rounded into a howl
and he wept with the grief of his great loss.
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