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Category: Siblings

359 • My kingdom …

359 • My kingdom …

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As kids, on the farm in Atlanta
We’d leave strict instructions for Santa:
‘One horse in each stocking
For riding, not rocking,
Their minimum speed set to “canter”.’

It seems that, all things being equal
This story would merit a sequel
The which I shall try,
In due course, to supply:
At present, I’m stumped by the prequel.

One is never too young to begin coveting the unattainable. Readers will readily guess the upshot and, I trust, excuse any inability to pinpoint the root of this parlous state of affairs.

335 • Minnie’s Boys

335 • Minnie’s Boys

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Holed up in a comedy depôt
In fascist-held downtown Aleppo:
While Chico and Harpo
Bewitch the Gestapo,
Watch Groucho bewildering Zeppo.

Even the sharpest satire will eventually be blunted and rendered obscure by tectonic shifts in the Zeitgeist. But the Marxes’ exuberant indifference to hierarchy, dismissal of propriety, and unravelling of logic make them uniquely vibrant mentors for dissidents down the ages. Marvellously the ostensible cipher Zeppo (who died on today’s date in 1979) was, in their Vaudeville heyday, the most giftedly insidious of the four, depping on stage with seamless, imperceptible brilliance no matter which of his heterogenous siblings was indisposed or unavailable.

223 • Apecraft (2)

223 • Apecraft (2)

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My brother had trained his bonobo
To play a few tunes on the oboe.
I bought my baboon
A good contra-bassoon
Yet that night she eloped with a hobo.

I have been reprimanded (hounded, even) about a ‘misanthropic tone’ that supposedly suffuses this poetical blog. ‘Has mankind accomplished nothing you would consider celebrating?’ writes one disenchanted correspondent. Well, it has: the admirable Great Ape Project has urged that chimps, bonobos and other such anthropoids should be accorded the same basic rights as human beings (exactly which human beings remains open to question). And no less a territory than The Balearic Islands extended personhood rights to the Great Apes as long ago as 2007 (one of that tribe holds temporary sway in my home country). But – cf bulletin #222 here at My Dog Errol – such envelope-stretching can come at a terrible price.

188 • Family ties

188 • Family ties

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At birth I was joined to my twin
Not by bones, nor shared organs, nor skin,
But this broad ginger beard
Which still dangles, unsheared,
’Twixt her beauteous cheeks and my chin.

I realise there could be objections to this rhyme, and I wish to pre-empt them by explaining that, in a perfect world, my first choice would have been the strong past participle ‘unshorn’ in place of ‘unsheared’; but in this Philistine age the writer who seeks to keep such charming archaisms alive is all-too often ostracised as some kind of a freak.

142 • Gemini

142 • Gemini

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The outlook’s obscure under Gemini,
The Twins: things are tricky with them on high.
One says, ‘You’re in clover,’
The other, ‘It’s over.’
The end of your world must be semi-nigh.

Arising at dawn, with Castor and Pollux in command overhead, I am heartened and reassured to reflect that the astrologer can still be relied on to be straight with us in these troubled times. Except this month. Our author seems to believe that ‘Dioscuri‘ means ‘obscure gods’ — needless to say, he has small Latin and less Greek.

115 • Euphrates (Volga)

115 • Euphrates (Volga)

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So sorry to read that dear Katy’s
Just drowned in the mighty Euphrates.
Her twin sister Olga
Was drowned in the Volga,
But that was way back in the Eighties.

Some would see the hand of ‘Fate’ in this double accident; others would suspect a genetically-governed recklessness where powerful currents are concerned. Equally, it could all be entirely meaningless.