Sure as the sun rises in some east-like direction, you are probably tired of my complaints of the state of my principal office computer. The poor machine is due for its second complete-reformatting-and-reinstall-of-this-thing-called-Windows-within-a-72-hour-period-or-thereabouts, and I can hear it whimpering. Or is that me? Whatever the case, I need to post on some other topic and today that topic is: a hodge podge of light verse by others.

I have been reading over Russell Baker's Norton Book of Light Verse and came upon this relevant commentary from Alexander Pope:

The Fool and the Poet

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

Next, for lack of a fresh double dactyl of my own, here is a favorite from George Starbuck, in a painterly vein:

High Renaissance

“Nomine Domini
Theotocopoulos,
None of these prelates can
Manage your name.

Change it. Appeal to their
Hellenophilia.
Sign it ‘El Greco.’ I’ll
Slap on a frame.”

And by way of freely associating fro that painting, consider this chorus from “Toledo,” one of the better songs on the altogether fine Elvis Costello-Burt Bacharach collaboration, Painted From Memory:

And do people living in Toledo
Know that their name hasn’t traveled very well?
And does anybody in Ohio
Dream of that Spanish citadel?