Ballade Against Cheesemongery
#29 of poetry
One of the things I love about the Ballade, as a form, is that it's equally adaptable to jokes as to serious poetry.
The grocer's, for $6.95 per pound
Harvarti sells, in blocks of creamy beige
Bespeckled with unthinkables (well ground
Or crushed) like nuts, or wine, or sage
And rosemary. At this I briefly rage
Then pass it o'er for cheap varieties
My unsophistic hungers to assuage.
I do desire no vanity in cheese.
I go, and madness does not fall behind:
In tubs on frigid shelves they sell a paste
Flavored with cherries, or with garlic rind,
Or bacon. And withal there goes to waste
The sweetest cream that e'er Galthea placed
Between pastoral palms of devotees
In Arcady, whose name is here disgraced,
And did desire no vanity in cheese.
And lo! What woe behold I though I rail
Against whatever fiend devised this thing
Called Pepperjack, to make the righteous quail
With wax to mock and capsicum to sting!
My muse fails, and I can no longer sing
Upon this sacrilege! The poet flees.
(He snatches Mozzeralla on the wing,
For he desires no vanity in cheese.)
Prince, you sent me pepper-corned Edam
With citron-oil essence. Remove it please:
Its power to sour my gut, your soul to damn!
I do desire no vanity in cheese.