"There comes a time when all you do is wrong / but don't you worry, time can heal your broken song"

[larryhammer]

I offered to write a custom bad poem; stevendj said "Yo! Write this!" and put his money where his mouth is. So here it is:

To the Very Great Victory Against the Traitor Counter-Revolutionaries Betraying the Workers of Hungary, 4 November 1956!

'Tis victory won with one great glorious stroke!
The allied Soviet tanks freed Budapest
And deposed Nagy, who from the Worker's cause broke!

Hear the rejoicing of hungry Hungarian folk
At corrupt counter-revolution suppressed:
'Tis victory won with one great glorious stroke!

Rákosi's real errors did did the people provoke,
But his replacement came they soon to detest
And deposed Nagy, who from the Worker's cause broke!

Nagy's mission: the Five-Year Plan to boldly revoke!
He both peasants and proletariat oppressed!
'Tis victory won with one great glorious stroke!

Heroic Huns' voices against their new leaders awoke
Crying, "Fascists financed by the imperialist West!"
And deposed Nagy, who from the Worker's cause broke!

All counter-revolutions on inherent contradictions choke
And when history's prime directive is expressed,
'Tis victory won with one great glorious stroke!

The world's workers will once more spoke:
Kádár, live long and prosper the people request:
'Tis victory won with one great glorious stroke
And deposed the treacherous imperialist no-good lackey Nagy, who from the Worker's true cause broke!!

---L.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Ave, McGonagall's worthy Son!

[janni.livejournal.com]

I knew there was a reason he was on that McGonagall email list!

[larryhammer]

A better title than MacFlecknoe!

---L.

Well done! (For a certain value of 'well.')

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I'm especially enamored of the scansion. I don't know Hungarian pronunciation, and I can't decide whether I want the name Nagy to be an iamb or a trochee.

Re: Well done! (For a certain value of 'well.')

[larryhammer]

I deliberately didn't look up the pronounciations until I was done. As I worked, I thought of "Nagy" as mostly a trochee; it turns out to be (if I understand correctly) a monosyllable with a silent y.

---L.

Re: Well done! (For a certain value of 'well.')

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

Not quite; gy is a compound letter, sort of a "dj" sound with a faint hint of a consonant "y". (The "y" is more prominent with a vowel following it. It's a very difficult sound for me to hear or pronounce properly.) It's no more a silent y than "with" is a silent h.

Congratulations on working in the optional Star Trek reference.

I'm impressed at how the insidious counter-revolution failed both by "one glorious stroke" of Soviet tanks and by choking on its own inherent contradictions.

Re: Well done! (For a certain value of 'well.')

[larryhammer]

Gotcha. But it's a monosyllable?

I hope you feel you got your money's worth.

---L.

Re: Well done! (For a certain value of 'well.')

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

Definitely a monosyllable. (Nagy means "big" in Hungarian, by the way. Add -on, and it means "very". Extremely common word.)

If the initiative goes down in flames, I will have gotten my money's worth. Anything else will be a grave disappointment. The poem itself is every bit as atrocious as anticipated.

Re: Well done! (For a certain value of 'well.')

[larryhammer]

Oh, good.

---L.