“they were all in love with dyin’ / and they were doing it in texas”

For Poetry Monday, while I could start another Kipling pong to a Housman ping, let’s instead boing off Housman himself:

Poem, after A. E. Housman, Hugh Kingsmill

What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean, upstanding chap like you!
Sure, if your throat ’tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl’s, and swing for it.

Like enough, you won’t be glad
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon’s not the only thing
That’s cured by hanging from a string.

So, when the spilt ink of the night
Spreads o’er the blotting-pad of light
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.


Housman claimed this was the best and indeed only good parody of himself he’d seen.

---L.

Subject quote from Pepper, Butthole Surfers.