Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward insipid and horridly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotions that turn out isiculous,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies who think me unduely vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out “this stuff is too stiff for us” —
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannons fumiferous
Engines vaporous — all this will pass;
Quite innocent — “he only wants to make shiver us.”
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.

And when thyself with silver foot shalt pass
Among the Theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ’s sake stick them up your ass.

*****

It is always sad with a favourite author to realise you’ve read everything they published, and there will be no more. Occasionally, though, some additional manuscript turns up–typically not of the highest standard, but enjoyable all the same. This is the case with a notebook of some fifty poems that T.S. Eliot wrote in his twenties and sold to his New York benefactor John Quinn. Edited and extensively annotated by Christopher Ricks, the work was finally published as ‘T.S. Eliot – Inventions of the March Hare – Poems 1909-1917‘ in 1996.

This odd poem manages to (incompletely) combine ballade form with a parody of the final quatrain of FitzGerald’s ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’.

Photo: “March hare…” by Newtown grafitti is licensed under CC BY 2.0.