Penguin

The words in moorage, the same black Penguins

‘My Childhood’ and ‘Youth’ relived when sanguine.

Martial and Virgil there in parallel

Their side and my side of what’s more to tell.

François Rabelais as by J. M. Cohen

Who doubled his lists to keep things goin’.

Gustave Flaubert in fifties-ish English.

Thomas Hardy – should have stayed singleish?

Leo Tolstoy, brisk then frownable,

His backbroken books unputdownable.

Or Herman Melville’s great brute of a thing

To chase again, or leave to its living?

Likely line-up, permanently on edge,

Defying me not to reach for their ledge.