The Cat's Pajamas

O, glorious Lord, please make it so

That down along eternity we’ll row

Atilted headlong, nattering the way

All mouth, no sleep, and endless be our day:

The Chesterton Night Tour, the Shaw Express,

A picknicking of brains in London dress

As one by one we cleave the railroad steams

To circumnavigate my noon and midnight dreams.

First Shaw arrives and hands me biscuit tin

“Grab on, dear child,” he cries. “Get in, get in!”

His voice pure Life Force judge and Mankind’s Maker.

G.K. climbs up past Shaw and ticket-taker.

Now down the line trots Dickens, paced by Twain.

“Hold on!” cries Mark. And Dickens: “Stop that train!”

“It’s stopped,” snorts Shaw, “are your brains packed? Aboard!”

With this last as commandment from our Lord

We jostle up to face each other’s wits

As Shaw amidst the mob like statue sits

And maunders up his tongue to launch the Game

His merest cough a shot to walk us lame.

Now Poe arrives in furs, he’s dressed for snows

Cold flurries caper him where e’er he goes,

Seen distantly his broad pale brow’s a moon

That sinks at daybreak but to rise at noon.

Charles Dickens’s stunned, but Twain cries, “Man alive!”

G. Shaw and G.K.? blind, as Deaths arrive

Just I amongst them hear pale Edgar’s tune

His pale heartbeat with tone that echoes loon.

Now Wilde wafts on, empurpled are his drums

As something wily-witted this way comes.