From Fred Turner's lyrical epic Genesis, a piece of satirical rather than lyrical writing worthy of Roy Campbell, on a journalist:
"Ah, Bill, you ask an ode of me, lest you
And all your brothers vanish like the dew;
Your virtues are not trumpet- tongued, and must
Be duly whistled ere they turn to dust.
First, a becoming modesty of style;
The aspirations of a crocodile;
A Shiite mullah's open- mindedness,
A moral backbone of boiled watercress;
All the prophetic vision of a sheep
(But not so witty, and not quite as deep);
A diction as unblemished by a thought
As is a baby's bottom by a wart;
You stand in the traditions of our art
As a blocked artery in a dying heart".
Soon to come from the Querencia : Kipling, guns, grizzlies (me); petroglyphs and cloning megafauna (Reid). Matt?
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