"Beauty is a viviparous, oblong fish"

During an email exchange at work today, I found myself typing this:

[Name Redacted], are you grieving
Over slogans while we're leaving?
Mottos, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the sale grows now closer
We will come to such sights grosser
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanword branding lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, ma'am, the name:
Sorrow's stings are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What logo looms, ghost-guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Marketing you mourn for.

---L.