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Raven's Eyes
Alexander "Sasha" Volokh
("A-sitting on a Gate" by Lewis Carroll
in the style of "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe)
Once upon a morning chilly, while I wandered on a hilly
Stretch of grassy countryside while I particularly hate --
Scarcely had I time to bellow, when, in dinner jacket yellow,
I beheld an aged fellow who was sitting on a gate.
"'Tis," I said, "a bearded fellow who is sitting on the gate.
How can it withstand his weight?"
Then the aged man beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the mild and quiet tones of the pronouncements that he said:
"In the hours that I toil, I sell mutton, I sell oil,
I grow rolls upon my soil and I sleep upon my bed --
I make buttons for your waistcoat as I lie upon my bed..."
Then I thumped him on the head.
Talking to the fellow yonder, all my thoughts began to wander --
I remember not a word of any answer he would give:
I had thought of eating batter, subsequently getting fatter,
So the answer didn't matter when I asked, "How do you live?"
His words trickled through my head as I said, "Tell me how you live,"
Just like water through a sieve.
So, when times are not propitious, when I'm seized with thoughts
malicious,
When to have a pleasant time is not my destiny or fate --
When I feel that I am caged (and that makes me quite enraged),
I think back upon that aged aged fellow so irate,
On that patriarchal person whom my questions made irate,
Sitting lonely on the gate.
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