CCXXXV and CCXXXVI

Ah! business was adventure in our day,

when all the lands were taken by some state.

No venture could increase one’s wealth nor pay,

except in capital or real estate.

And when the product cycle was complete

(or leastways when such cycle was old news)

the products and estates had to compete

with one another’s customers and views.

Thus so, the siege on time began to be!

The greatest of the wars of any age.

The war for our retention, you and me,

is what our greatest generals engage.

And that’s a war I’d like to see undone.

This grand adventure’s winners are no-one.

~~~

I wrote a stupid poem about geese,

because I found some sounds that sounded right,

which still had need of much linguistic grease

to overlook linguistic oversight.

But Mrs. Crawford said I should write more,

not less, as anyone else should have said.

How gratifying to my pride—that, for

fourteen years old, I should be so misled.

And thenceward Mrs. Jacobsen took charge

of my most vain of literary hopes.

How lucky that she didn’t so enlarge

the gaping gaps that were my writing tropes.

Instead, they kept me blind. How could it be

that blindness was what was the best for me?