So it came that Too Little married Too Much

and all pronounced it an ideal match,

as tending towards the golden mean:

a chance for Too Much to be somewhat less,

for Too Little to wax into something more.

The priest and the guests felt sure it was blessed.

‘O cup to my water, O my weather vane!’

‘Rain to my drought, my gentle hurricane!’

They looked lovely in matching metonymies.

But they left out one guest – the Literal –

who sneaked, unseen, into the hall

to utter her matter-of-fact revenge:

‘See things as they are, for only a fool

can pretend a cracked cup can ever be full

or that mankind can catch it when brightness falls.’

For a while they were fine. Too Little grew fat

and, filling out to his marriage vows,

abandoned his famine in favour of feast.

But his viscera got him. No conjugal bliss

could stop him from turning away in disgust.

Soon he had slid into someone less,

past least, until he was merely some,

an honest-to-goodness matchstick man –

he’d tried to be golden, but had ended up mean.

Too Much grew rampant at his mutiny

and ditched her honeymoon regime

to rail against the insults of time.

Dressed in gowns of bitter glory,

she flung floods at her husband’s thing of stone,

wove storms of illusion, but woke alone