‘If vice can ever be abashed
It must be ridiculed or lashed’
Jonathan Swift, "The life and character of Dr Swift" (1733)

I
Since now the Dean has quit the field
The poesie shelves of bookshops yield,
Lined up against the furthest walls,
Slim volumes by assorted bores.
Wystan Auden’s Greatest Hits
Blush beside some other twit’s
‘Best Selected Love Haiku’
And ‘Kitchen Sonnets’ One & Two.

But who has status to mock the quo
When all the BA students know
That, as the clever Frenchmen say,
‘Tout le monde est dans le vrai’,
And truth and taste and proper diction
Are species of Poetic Fiction?

Although this is the case, we may
Nostalgically recall the day
When the Dean’s destructive Muse
Lashed the knave, and showed the ruse
Which underlies the machinations
Of those who steer the fates of nations.

Though two hundred sixty years ago
Her owner died, I’ll try to show
How with sufficient charm and gumption
This Muse may do us one last function,
And give us like the Roman Sibyls
Truth in octosyllables.
Furthermore, I do propose
(Immodestly you may suppose),
That once encased in ice-cool rhyme
The heavy trochées of our time
Will neutralise, and so release
Universal love and peace.

Her invocation won’t be easy,
My style will range from high to sleazy
And some of it may be obscene-
But this is keeping with the Dean
Who, risking a restraining order,
Lurked around Celia’s quarters
Just to penetrate the gloom
Of The Lady’s Dressing Room.

So keep in mind that of what follows
Some most definitely wallows
In the darker side of Swift,
Though sometimes I will try to lift,
Provided I can find a rhyme,
To the splendid and sublime.
Notwithstanding this disclaimer
Keep your guard up, but don’t blame the
Author if some is pas devant
Well-mannered mothers and les enfants.

II
So much for the Apologia:
Now I feel a little freer
To cut directly to my theme
And say precisely what I mean.

For rhyme’s a kind of oral sex,
We say a word, a word connects,
Blushing syllables conflate
And phonemes interdigitate.
Though at times it’s touch and go,
What follows in the lines below
Is a vast fellatio
Of tidy words with messy meanings
And the author’s Leftist leanings
Put together to produce
A two hundred thirty line excuse
For indulging my perversion
In presenting this diversion:
So let me beg your royal pardon
For rhyming George Bush with bin Laden.

To qualify my dissidence
From manners and from common sense
I will propose a metaphor
To tell you what the rhyming’s for.
If we assume that words contain
The souls of people whom they name,
Then we join them in a rhyme
The words make love, and so combine
Their tonal juices, ‘til we see
A sweet homogeneity.
To achieve this synthesis
Of love and literary bliss
I will attempt a sexual orgy
Between bin Laden and our Georgie.
The intellectual lubrication
For this rather odd conflation
Requires a sleeping Muse to wake
And somnolently choose to make
This verbal union, and release
That shy and blushing beauty, Peace.

First things first, I will address
The two accused, then digress
To examine their contrition
At what’s become of their ambition.

III
Georgie, you deserve applause
For making oil a moral cause
And for giving sloppy war-head
To all the folks that Cheney said.
It takes a special sort of brain
To stand before the world and claim
That lurking in the bombed-out city,
An abstract noun called ‘liberty’.
Having seen your statue of her
I can’t recall a rocket launcher,
But history, I suppose, is rife
With art that isn’t true to life.

For me, however, it won’t do
To hang this nonsense just on you
Osama also bears the blame
(though to his credit, he’s insane).
Together, you have made this age
Into a sprawling orphanage,
And planted in the mind a fear
Of everyone with facial hair
(Indeed, an incidental error
Of the so-called War on Terror:
Now men with beards are less well-paid
and less likely to get laid);
But though this kind of thing is sad,
Historians will rush to add
That once this mess is packed in books
By scholars with more brains than looks,
The individual’s private grief
Will fade against the stark relief
Of History’s grim, demented engine
Charging on without direction
Until it find a synthesis
‘Tween Georgie and his nemesis.

Despite the reasons they may give
This coupling is imperative:
And all the rhetoric to date,
And the maneuvers of the State,
Including now the present ‘war’
Is Georgie calling his amour.

But bunker-busters can’t buy love
Nor flaming bouquets from above-
However, since he’s so in heat
I will indulge a small conceit
And try to locate if I can
Georgie’s tall and turbaned man.

IV
The two accused are in the room
Resplendent as the bride and groom,
Georgie’s flowing satin dress
Puts to shame his earnestness
And bin Laden’s black tuxedo
Is the image of bravado.
And yet, there is no intercourse,
The two stare shyly from across
The distance of a double bed
Wondering what events have led
To the present situation
Where humanity’s salvation
Depends upon their conjugation.

Now, although they’re intimate
Neither lover will submit,
Even to save his blackened soul,
To taking up the passive role.
So as to get them to relate
I offer some amyl nitrate,
And softly tell the lover’s wish:
That every sweaty feast of flesh
Bring more than only gonorrhoea
But also bring the Panacea.
Still, neither really seems to care
To strip the other’s underwear.

V
So now to bring to a conclusion
This task I lost in my confusion
The rhyming of the world’s two tyrants
To put an end to global violence.
The instruments I’ve had to use
Have now become a little loose
And though they’re carried me thus far,
I need something superior.

Searching through the Doctor’s canon
I sense his causa sine quo non,
His darling Muse alive and well
Now dressed in Gucci and Chanel
But somehow damaged by the years-
Her eyes, alas, are full of tears;
She turns to me and softly says:

“Because of Georgie and Osama,
I have to wear my body armour
And when I move to kiss, my breath
Reeks of oil, napalm and death.
Reflected in the glass, I see
Falling bombs instead of me,
And tattooed on my wasted chest
Political slogans stain my breast.
All the paraphernalia
Of each ridiculous failure,
The intellectual defeat
Of freedom by a rich elite
And the failure of democracy
To really touch the powers-that-be,
Surrounds me like a holocaust
Of all the loves we’ve had, and lost.”

Pale with grief, the Muse expresses
All the kinds of hopelessnesses,
The pretence, shame and vanity
Of every type of poetry,
And dismisses in a neat eclogue
The author as a demagogue.
I argue back in syllogisms:

“But don’t you see I have my reasons;
‘If vice can ever be abashed
It must be ridiculed or lashed’
And verse is like a cat-o’-nine
Ergo, I ask you for one rhyme-
A single, ringing, verbal fix
To make two tyrants merge and mix
Then melt into a flood of sighs
And just as quickly neutralise.”

Mutely, she looks me up and down
Then says, “you must take off my gown.
If I am to give you this
I must be free from artifice.
The Doctor liked me in the nude
When he had a point to prove.”

Ripping off her outer strictures,
On her back I see two pictures:
Two grotesque and red-nosed clowns
Each with a tremendous frown,
One wears a kind of cowboy hat,
The other a winding turban that
He tries to wrap around the earth,
As the other calculates its worth.

Near each picture are the names
Of the monstrous clowns that play these games,
The frowning cowboy is called ‘Go-go’,
And his turbaned playmate, ‘Bo-bo’…

But now I hear a kind of creaking
And the trill of bed-springs squeaking
The world appears to hold its breath-
For what follows, sex or death…