When emails were at the cutting edge of technology a friend sent his son, at boarding school, the well known mnemonic Willy, Willy, Harry, Stee.
“Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry three;
One two three Neds, Richard two,
Harrys four five six, … then who?
Edwards four five, Dick the bad,
Harrys (twain), Ned six (the lad);
Mary, Bessie, James you ken,
Then Charlie, Charlie, James again;
Will and Mary, Anna Gloria,
Georges four, Will four, Victoria;
Edward seven, George and Ted,
George the sixth, now Liz instead.”
The school blocked the poem on the grounds of improper language. When J told his own father this amusing story, he harrumphed that the Head Master should have better things to do than reading the boys’ mail.
“Goldfinch, friend, I’ll cock my head —
let’s check the world out, just me and you:
this winter’s day pricks like chaff;
does it sting your eyes too?
Boat-tailed, feathers yellow-black,
sopped in colour beneath your beak,
do you get, you goldfinch you,
just how you flaunt it?
What’s he thinking, little airhead? —
white and yellow, black and red!
Both eyes check both ways — both! —
will check no more — he’s bolted.”
This was chosen as a Poem on the Underground and displayed on the Metropolitan Line. I look out for these poems because they are a barometer of the state of the London economy. They only appear when there is no advertiser to pay for the space, like the maddening safety posters. But I digress, a passenger complained to TfL because of the inappropriate language in the first verse.
What do you think of the poem? I was not impressed and intended to share some better poems on an avian theme until I saw it is translated from Russian. “Osip Mendelshtam was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school. He was arrested during the repressions of the 1930s and sent into internal exile with his wife. Given a reprieve of sorts, they moved to Voronezh in southwestern Russia. In 1938, Mandelstam was arrested again and sentenced to five years in a corrective-labour camp in the Soviet Far East. He died that year at a transit camp near Vladivostok aged 47.” (Wikipedia)
He deserves my respect.
Years ago, the newspaper said that somebody had objected to “O, western wind” on some American transit system, not caring for “Christ that my love were in my arms [etc.]” The transit authority, in its explanation, said that the practice of displaying poems on public transportation had originated in London. This did not help, for the objector replied among other things that London was a very atheistic city.
Today’s NY Times gives all of page A4 to an article about Judith Chernaik, the woman who started this program 40 years ago.