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"Now 1608, If You Cast Your Minds Back, Was a Very Bad Year for the Theater"
The task: you have a time machine that's stuck --
It jumps four centuries exactly: who
To rescue from Jacobian marl and muck
To poetize for us? Whose death undo?
Will Shakespeare's lines are getting crabbed by then;
Ben Jonson was, now, barely getting going;
There's Beaumont/Fletcher -- but they're boring men --
Or Middleton, or Dekker -- both weak showing;
Sidney and Spencer are Right Out -- both quite dead
As Kit (who'd soon as knife you as perform);
There's Daniel, with his virtues (here I "meh"ed),
And Drayton's lack of vice (and I'm lukewarm) --
So none of these will do; yet -- here's the one:
'Tis by John Donne our verse today's undone.
---L.
It jumps four centuries exactly: who
To rescue from Jacobian marl and muck
To poetize for us? Whose death undo?
Will Shakespeare's lines are getting crabbed by then;
Ben Jonson was, now, barely getting going;
There's Beaumont/Fletcher -- but they're boring men --
Or Middleton, or Dekker -- both weak showing;
Sidney and Spencer are Right Out -- both quite dead
As Kit (who'd soon as knife you as perform);
There's Daniel, with his virtues (here I "meh"ed),
And Drayton's lack of vice (and I'm lukewarm) --
So none of these will do; yet -- here's the one:
'Tis by John Donne our verse today's undone.
—23 April 2008
The title is with apologies to Flanders & Swann. Written for Matociquala.---L.