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Name and Brand: to a Co-Worker
Tuesday, 1 September 2009 07:52********, are you grieving
Over slogans while we're leaving?
Mottos, like the things of man, you
With your fresh phrase care for, can you?
Ah! as the sale grows now closer
We will come to such sights grosser
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanword branding lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, ma'am, the name:
Sorrow's stings are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What logo looms, ghost-guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Marketing you mourn for.
---L.
Over slogans while we're leaving?
Mottos, like the things of man, you
With your fresh phrase care for, can you?
Ah! as the sale grows now closer
We will come to such sights grosser
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanword branding lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, ma'am, the name:
Sorrow's stings are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What logo looms, ghost-guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Marketing you mourn for.
—9 August 2007
Written for a coworker (whose name I've redacted, but it was two trochaic feet) when our company was sold and changed names, with a fair amount of official rah-rah. Parody of, of course, "Spring and Fall: to a Young Child" by Hopkins.---L.