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On the Season of the Slug | Poem

 
 
 

On the Season of the Slug



 

   I passed the deepest greenfield
 
  On this day of whiffy summersun

   And instantly was captured: had

   To stop and bob a bill toward a

   Herd of little-leggers moeing runty-shins

   Untoward about a most unlikely burg.

   They arrived in a thousand shades

   Of Bambini, pudge, and ghost, 

   High on hope and shylights,

   All fawning on the slider

   That never yet had slud,

   The dizzy that itself had no mind

   To spin and hung there like

   A maiden unbound in gallant homage

   While the revolution forged so far,

   So fast that it was lodged

   In Mudville hours before the

   Nightcap Limited invoked

   Its roundhouse right.

   Somehow the jeery canbreaks

   Called to mind the year

   We planted the old green gallows

   With throneberries and bally-whackers,

   Fully expecting a harvest

   Of half-blind nightingales

   And the oftimes ribald lark;

   Youthful of moment,

   We were unsurprised 

   And full of heady cackle

   At the fall's implosion of dusty jays

   Skewered between safe and home:

   So we consoled ourselves in crushing

   A wholly canted September

   With half a chilled October

   To make the wine

   That left its lees

   In the tatters of their tales.

   It no longer matters that

   The goat got all the chaff

   In aspiring to be a sheep:

   Pleasures lie in the motley tang

   Of failure lined with grace;

   No calling higher

   Than to put out the fire

   Blown awry by the heroes of spring.


- David Mitchell
 

to David   /  to Moongate
.