Poetry

Orf

Rod Usher

 

How vairy English was Wystan Hugh Auden

while far too tart to be labelled a toff

who else but a Pom, in a poem on war

could have mesomorph rhyme with off?

W.H. was a word-rescuer and neologue

obtemper, osse, glop ... just a few he offshows

ever so caustic with slop and the slip-shod:
“No one hears his own remarks as prose.”

 
Wrinkled Auden, wrankled Auden
forgiving as fog, disinfectant as bleach

wielded his verb and his gin with a grin

for “The Ogre cannot master Speech.”

 

Notes:

Behold the manly mesomorph
Showing his bulging biceps off
               from a poem titled with this first line.

Unrhymed, unrhythmical the chatter goes

Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose

                from “At the Party”

 
The Ogre cannot master Speech
                  from “August 1968”