The very prospect causes me to blench.
I really can't write poems very well.
Maybe a drink would help – of fine Moselle...
This kind of poem's easier to write in French,
although there's lots of rhymes for 'villanelle'
in English. (Very good Moselle!
But I must keep struggling at the wordsmith-bench.)
– What is that delicious thing I smell ?
It has undertones of caramel.
It can't be coming from that snooty wench
who said I don't write poems very well.
Is it from a kind of sweet quenelle ?
It's more attractive than the stench
that's coming from the body in the well
which has begun to bloat and swell
and rot like feet in a wartime trench.
(I really can't write poems at all well,
and definitely not a villanelle!)
Maybe I should start again in French.
Il y avait une chanteuse : Coccinelle,
a media sensation, I've heard tell –
on Wikipedia – a transgender wench...
I really can't write poems very well
and I'll never try no more to write a villanelle.
__________
(As-tu lu The Scarlet Pimpernel ?
Nothing to do with pimprenelle in French...)
Dylan Thomas' macho 'Do not go gentle into that good night'
is a villanelle. Several have been written by the great Wendy Cope.
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