The Metrognome*

 

Grady McMurtry

 

27 September 1941

 

 

Once, when traveling, I came

Upon a shrine of primal shame

Now desolate and lost in sump;

Sitting me upon the stump

Of the tree of life I thought

Back upon the knowledge sought

By Eve, when she was in her prime,

Slither tracks across the slime

March by a bore, the earthworm’s door,

Where lay a molding apple core.

 

Humming faintly to a rune,

Some call it dun, some call it dune,

While munching steaks of Devon shark

I chipped the log of Noah’s Ark

Until I came to where it said

wish that I had never read

Those books that Daddy used to keep

Well locked within the ocean deep.”

By which I knew, it must be true,

The hair of Davy Jones is blue.

 

Materializing where he stood

Above a pot of rancid blood

A friendly ghoulie took a seat,

And pounded it beneath his feet

To see if it would break in two;

It did, and so he found a new

One. “Good Morning,” said he, “Mister,

Who was that you were with yester

Day night.” On clicked my nimbus bright

And I reached out to take a bite.

 

Addressing half the varied throng,

I told the tail I tell; “Too long,

Mr Fiends, said I with much delight,

time has come, the time is right”

And left they marched along the shore

In search of that which went before

While aft the bow was going down

To where most things of that sort drown

Their troubles here in, “Thanks old deer,

If you are thirsty, there’s the bier.”

 

* One what keeps time, literally.—777

 

 

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