Idle Songs

O the Roman ambassador
 Was torn apart-apart by plaster
 And reassembled after:
 the 40 years of bombing:
 They were wild and they were crying, in the picture
 Where the smoke cleared
 Tear your body from your beard
 And watch as the planes burn the boats from the isle
 A board is a board
 When the pulpit meets the sword
 And the poet has been bored
 He's seen Fire and he's seen Pain
 And the tedium has stained,
 O Vergil, get your rake out there's a pastor to be pulled
 And 60 miles west of Rome: "I stopped some dreadful hoard."
 And I, I will let my body go,
 And when it goes and then it stinks
 There will be beauty in its stink
 And the last rays of the fink
 Will suppose themselves to shine
 Upon the corpse of Stinking Gold
 That has fallen into brine,
 Idle song.