From 'Water and Waste'

[22by7.livejournal.com]

Dead Horse


Not to be born is best, said Sophocles
( a second-bester with the rest of us ).

When a close neighbour suffered her bereavement
she got quite good at doing watercolours
( striving for tolerable second-bests
may be to blame for all human achievement ).

Not to be born is best, said Sophocles
( or, second-best, to pass the tedious years
devising therapeutic compensation ).

With marriage ( or at least the sexual act )
we have groped through darkness, if not without tears,
at least towards a sweaty consolation,
making our mutual best of a bad lot.

Not to be born is best, said Sophocles,
( the second-best is an abysmal bore )
a view which he would re-assert, I'm sure,
hearing the second-rate asthmatic wheeze
of this ephemeral trite Audenese,
the product of a brain long dulled and clogged,
the patter of a dead horse being flogged.


--- Peter Reading