Laureate Manqué?

[steepholm]

I don't seem to have written any poems about the now-dead queen — except this one, which dates from when she was 90. Will it do?

'Philately'

When you were young, Elizabeth,
I'd lick the nape of your pale neck,
Tongue you till you were sticky with it,
Then dismiss you coldly, pass you
To friends, to strangers - quite forgotten.

We meet less often now,
And when we do are politely distant,
Exchange not lips but fingertips at most,
In self-contained and self-adhesive age
Hugging the blank white walls.

Comments

[calimac]

Although self-adhesive stamps feel more like festive stickers than real stamps, I do not mourn the passing of the stamps that had to be moistened by tongue. The glue was rarely reliable.

MAD Magazine once published a series of fumetti made of postage stamps. One had a stamp of George VI with his head facing left, and an otherwise-identical stamp with his head facing right. The series was left-right-left-right-left, and on the last one was a word balloon in which he was saying, "Jolly good tennis match!"

[steepholm]

Ah MAD magazine. Is it still going?

[sovay]

— except this one, which dates from when she was 90. Will it do?

I like it.

[steepholm]

I'm glad!

[tadorna]

This is a genuinely great poem, but I nevertheless fear you might not get the poet laureate job.

[steepholm]

Political correctness gone mad, I call it.

[ashkitty]

Oh, that's wonderful. (I also do not miss licking stamps. Eww. *g*)

[steepholm]

Likewise!

[ethelmay]

From Cousin Rosamund, by Rebecca West: “These were such postcards as one would sit down and write for the sake of company. When she had achieved one she would fumble among the tiresome foreign stamps to find the needed one, and go into the bathroom and hold it under a trickle from the tap. None of our family ever licked a stamp; it was to us an action of debauched unfastidiousness.”

[steepholm]

I can only agree!