Brain, old pensioner,
for years of loyal and fretful service,
what honorarium will do?
A silver watch
to tell minute vistas by,
while 60 cogs a minute
leave you, winded, to your slackening
haste?
A pen seeping bile
from its whale-black innards?
You, who never dressed before noon!
I find you out
early: doing sums, mending fences,
knitting yarns. Here,
let me clink my fork
against the glass,
rise to the occasion,
my shabby matron, my old grass-gypsy,
and swear, though you lie
in comic disarray,
pilled and pickled in your juices,
your skirts frayed and gussetted,
that you once ploughed furrows
straight as statutes,
once, with your pack of hunting dogs,
ran deep into far sloughy fields
to snare game,
once hooted fashion,
once tupped and raved,
once cheered, fueled, dabbled, quaffed,