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Overloading the Machine

Postcard (Boulder to Boston)

A boy had common eons
Of transparent time
Independent of rotating
Cantos. It was a hot, black
Blustery night. I stole through
Palace attendants, each
Its armed parasite, drinking
Canto Three. Your ruby ring
Made life and laid the law,
The rum of an old footman,
Liberties with commendable
Alacrity, relations at first touching
The shrubbery at the rear of the house.

I thought music. Never shall I forget
How elated I was upon learning
(A note my reader shall find
Within a suburban house). It came out
In a skimpy liter of Pale Fire, in
Heroic couplets, of nine hundred-ninety,
"The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew."

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

-- Samuel Foote

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