Poetry

Quine's Pine

John Whitworth

Quine is the American philosopher Willard Van Quine. It is all explained on the internet.

I want a sloop. A flush-decked, ten-gun sloop,
One mast, rigged fore-and-aft, is what I most
Desire. But slooplessness is now my brother.
I am notorious along the coast.
In Montserrat they talk of nothing other
(In Maracaibo too, and Guadeloupe):
How my sad heart, it slobbers at the poop.
For lack of sloop, I pinch, I pine, I droop,
Scrimp as a scarecrow, pallid as a ghost,
A runt you’d scarcely take the time to smother.
And this the man who used to rule the roast
Or roost, Van Quine, the father and the mother
Of mad, bad braggart brigands born to boast
Or boost. Boop-boop-a-loop. To sloop. A toast!

John Whitworth