Tuesday, November 27, 2012

occasional poem.

I was browsing through Good Poems for Hard Times on Sunday afternoon, and came across this delight, which I'd never noticed before.

Any prince to any princess

August is coming
and the goose, I'm afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been 
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.

I can't imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.

I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.

The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be repeated.

I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn't getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see the absurdity of the situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It's been three weeks now, and not even
a word.

Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,

let down your hair,

reconsider.

 - Adrian Henri

2 comments:

KScissorhands said...

LoveLOVELOVE

We all must reconsider.

LOVE

DaveShack said...

Great poem.

It reads a lot like a Lisel Mueller poem. If you haven't read her, obtain her collection Alive Together post-haste.

You are *really* going to enjoy eating in Portland, where there seems to be some kind of regulation against bad-tasting food. A recent favorite is the Hungarian Mushroom soup at the Savor Soup stand downtown.