Collected Poems
To my Butcher
To my Butcher
On having a pound of steak delivered in the 'Sunday Express'.
Sir, I protest. You've sent my meat
wrapped in this blood-stained Sunday sheet;
and now, it seems, my dinner must
smell rank with other people's lust,
and gossip of the stage and screen,
and crimes of blood and cash and spleen,
and turf-notes, and the dirty tricks
of men who play at politics.
Pray you in future, sir, to use
the 'Philatelist' or the 'Poulterers' News';
or stay! for what were weeklies made?
here is our safe and fitting aid.
No active germ could find gestation
inside the 'Week-End' or the 'Nation';
it would not even spoil my lunch
to find my viands wrapped in 'Punch'.
So keep your Sunday sheets, my friend,
and put them to a better end.
For meat, use weeklies — safe, and cheap:
employ your weeklies, sir, and keep
the custom (else, good sir, we part!)
of one who, in his simple heart,
finds Sunday papers running sores,
and weeklies merely harmless bores.