Sunday Poem.

I think I might have half-pie promised a poem every Sunday on here.  We'll see how long that lasts.  At any rate due to the current activity of time-leeches in my area I have nothing entirely new to offer today.  So, in lieu of something wholly new, I here present my entire literary output from 2009. It's about the closest I get to a definitive political statement.

Those from Dunedin may recognise our stadium as the theme and have a small chuckle.

Those familiar with the work of the Coleridge will either be amused or mortified.

So, without further ado...

A Vision in a Dream (with apologies to S.T. Coleridge)

In Awatea did Chairman Mal
A sunny rugby-dome decree :
Where Leith, th’ancestral water, fell
Through campus, fair, but cold as hell

Down to the southern sea.

Two score square rods of grassy ground
With concrete stands were girdled round :
there was a roof, a  sparkling Perspex cover,
And there was many a sponsor’s banner there.

A thousand thousand cobbles scattered over,
In shades of grey with which grey can’t compare.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which lay
twixt concrete hills beneath the perspex cover!
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath the winter sun was haunted
By stalwart wailing for his terrace uncovered!
Down in this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
Two mighty teams each other now adversing :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted passing
Huge forwards collide like thick rebounding hail,
while dainty wingers chase each other’s tails :
A pilgrimage from out the scarfies quarter
comes, following drunkenly th’ancestral water.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Past Cook and Gardies (painted blue as well),
They reach the campus, fair, but cold as hell,
then down with  tumult t‘ward the southern ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Malcolm hears them all
In mighty chorus, OTAAAAAGOOO’s call!

The roof across the dome was measured
The crowd was pack’d tight in its pouch ;
And Malcolm thought with tingling pleasure
No way in hell they’ll burn a couch!

It is a Miracle of rare device,

A rugby-dome with roof. How nice!

A long forgotten highlander

In a vision once I saw:

            He was a dunedinite of old

            And in my dream he proudly told

            Stories of Carisbrook

Could I revive within me

His proud nostalgic song,

Then in a moment I’d forget me,

Malcolm’s speeches loud and long,

Wherewith he builds that dome in air,

The rugby dome! how nice! come look!

And all who hear would stop and stare

And all should cry, Who Cares! Who cares!

This pompous man gives himself airs!

We’ve got the damn thing, let’s go look,

But to the chairman bar the gates ,

We know he hates the taste of speights,

And never loved our Carisbrook