Dactyls for a Pounding Head
by Alan Gould
Ghastly the grip of the grape, how it grabs at me,
Golly I’ve gulped such a gutful of red.
Horrid my head, how it hectors me, blabs at me,
moaning, My boy, don’t you wish you were dead.
Ghoulish and gruesome my grin in this looking glass,
tongue, euch! as furry as two year-old meat.
Body! How did you arrive at this shocking pass?
Eyes, you’re the green of the soles of my feet.
Claret, you’ve clawed me from laughter to tearfulness,
Burgundy you have accomplished the same.
Sauvignon, where now your savour of cheerfulness?
Malbec, why weren’t you a little more tame?
Who was it urged me? Falstaffian Brissenden?
Rabelais Page or that veteran, Hope?
Gentlemen, urging of this sort just isn’t done.
Why throw a drowner both ends of the rope?
Why, when I offered to pummel the cellarman,
did you not handcuff my wrists to my chair?
Sorriest business that ever befell a man,
finding he’s pitched through the icy night air.
Gravel, so grazing, ouch! groaning I rose from it,
drove toward home more by crook than by hook.
Then at my bumper — what should I suppose from it? —
flashing blue lights and a man with a book.
