You who are listeners and love lightly to learn
Of the practitioners of poetry and their awesome advances
Hither haply hurry, and hist to my tale of the travails of Simon,
And his search, amidst much that was passingly modish,
For a suitable subject. ‘Miss Oswald has done well’
Our bard ruminated, ‘with her rhapsodic Homeric re-stylings.
My own Sir Gawain was most suavely saluted and critically
Commended. Yes, history’s the thing, and King Arthur my
Lyrical lode-star.’ And with that he boldly began, his journey commencing,
In prudent preparation, with the quest for a style. ‘Malory won’t do’
He crisply concluded. ‘Too Greenery-yallery, quintessentially quaint.
No, I shall follow that poem in Lincoln Cathedral library,
Antique and alliterative, though Tennyson it ain’t. When these
Deeds were done he dubbed his knights and dealt out
Dukedoms in different lands. How does that sound? For the poet’s realm
Has many mansions, in this proud, post-modernist time.
And to the dismal dearth of scansion may be aptly added
The lamentable lack of rhyme. But never mind. They were fast
In fording to the fine coast of Normandy. You know, I think I’m
On to something here. Mistress Duffy wastes her words in adumbrating
Odes for textbooks; Sir Andrew Motion’s muse is mostly maladroit. At Sir
Geoffrey one looks listlessly askance. Yet hearken here to
Sir Simon, poesy pricked on the pin-point
Of his ersatz-Arthurian lance.