Читать книгу Impertinent Poems - Cooke Edmund Vance - Страница 12

Why do you?

What's it to you?

I know you do, for I've seen the gruesome feeling simmer through you.

I've seen it rise behind your eyes

And take your features by surprise.

I've seen it in your half-hid grin

And the tilting-upness of your chin.

Good-natured though you are and fair, as you have often boasted,

Still you like to hear the other man artistically roasted.

Whenever the star secures the stage with the spotlight in the centre,

Why should the anvil chorus think it has the cue to enter?

Whenever the prima donna trills the E above the clef,

Why should the brasses orchestrate the bass in double f?

It's funny,

But it's even money,

You like to spy the buzzing fly in the other fellow's honey.

Though you have said that honest bread

Demands no honey on it spread,

And if we eat the crusty wheat

With appetite, it needs no sweet,

Still I have noticed you were not at all inclined to cry

Because the man the bees had blest was bothered with the fly.

Whenever the chef concocts a dish which sets the world to tasting,

Why does the cooking-school get out its recipes for basting?

Whenever a sprinter beats the bunch from the pistol-shot, why is it

The heavy hammer throwers get together for a visit?

Excuse me!

Did you accuse me

Of turning the spit a little bit myself? Why, you amuse me!

Didn't I scratch the sulphurous match

And blow the flame to make it catch?

Didn't you trot to get the pot

To heat the water good and hot?

Then, seizing on our victim, if we found no greater sin,

Didn't we call him "a lobster," and cheerfully chuck him in?