How dare they lay
violent hands on my language.
I will have my tongue whole
or not at all.
Am I to stand and watch
while they investigate the word-hoard of my ancestors?
How can I
whose utterances come down from Otterburn and Burns
have these snoopers finger and fondle,
censure and censor?
Were I to let the likes of them
pale in, pale out and partition,
how could I look the Ploughman in the eye? -
that particular Ploughman
whom these minutiae have a special down on,
who, rather than speed his plough,
would see him toast in hell
for his 'dainty damies', his 'sweet wee ladies',
his 'Lovely Lass of Inverness'
and many another sexist loathsomeness.
Hear me, my monitor lizards,
descendants of the tyrannosaurus,
hands off our Robin,
else you may find yourselves thrashed
as he once thrashed an elder crop
of Holy Willies and the Theologically Correct.
Peasant that he was,
quite a spade-merchant when it came to digging up dirt.
'Spade - Did I hear the S-word spoke?
Who spake it?
Take her out. To the loo with her!
Soap her mouth out.
Sp---, indeed! Is not the person aware
that the S-word designates a blunt instrument,
a soiled tool, redolent of unfiltered filth?
Doesn't the mentally challenged maniac know
That calling an S an S can bring down
the whole bland facade, unclothe the Emperor?'
They are out to oust Esperanto
as the mouther of sweet nothings.
Their aim is a tongue which neither
eats nor excretes.
Ever asked yourself why there's no poetry
in Esperanto?
They have hired US-of-Yankee Frank Insteins
to e-labor-ate a langua
incapable of bearing offspring,
an unspeak whose unspeakableness lies
in being laid down, not handed down
and therefore without glory of dialect,
a Thou Shalt Not Deviate
diktat of a tongue, all highroad
and no byroads, Roman road, no roamin,
arch-enemy of untranmelled Shakespeak.
'My mistress' eyes --'
Ah, no. This won't do.
Let's see - How about
'My mz's eyes are nothing like the sun' -
A truly mzrable line. O rave new world!
Wince not sweet Will.
'Tis thus ordained by those
of more exalted eddification than thyself,
graduates all of Elmer Twaddle College, darkest Dakota,
experts on everything under the sun.
How could you compete with the likes, my swan -
born in the Dark Ages, before benefit
of spell-check list and WORD PROCESSOR,
both electronic and neo-canonic.
Alas, my peerless chick, it seems
your days serening it unchecked upon Avon are over.
Elmer Tweedledomb holds thee in thrall.
'Shakespeare? - Bill Shakespeare? -
Ain't he the guy wrote that blatant bit
of heterosexual hype
Roll me over I'm Juliet, or some such tripe?'
No joke, Sweet Will,
no bad news from China this,
but your own home ground children,
English children of the post-authoritarian Ordeal,
ordered by their post-judgemental head-case Head
to stay away from R&J
which is pure heterosexual propaganda.
A terrible mad cow disease leers
from the eyes of recently rational shes.
In China the children were the RED GUARDS;
in Britain it is sometimes the teachers.
Things are at fever pitch.
The recently sane
rush in where zanies fear to tread,
kicking Romeo to death with truly Cromwellian zeal.
Willie lie low.
For the moment it's good you're dead.
Your plays are all they can get at.
Salmon Rushdie's not so lucky.
The vicious Victorian frumps, the whey-faced zealots
march again: Messrs & Mzzs Bowdler and Grundy,
arm-in-arm, criss-crossing the country.
Their index fingers poke.
Book burnings have been reported.
Ban a word and you'll ban a bookful.
Burn a book and you'll torch a library.
They will protest their innocence.
They will proclaim their purity of purpose.
They'll not go so far as to say
the end justifies the means,
because this was what they were recently
accusing the Realm of Evil of.
Their purpose is the truly humane one
of erecting a shock-absorbent, thought-absolvent
cordon sanitaire round the minds of the doomed.
These are those who used to clothe
curvaceous sofa legs in woolen leggings
lest they should lure the minds of youth to thoughts indecent.
These are those who draped
the defloration of Vietnam
in the green mantle of 'Operation Cedar Falls'.
These are those who tell Milton and me
what we ought to be calling ourselves -
no, not bl---, not B-L-I-N-D -
O horrid spade-word! - so naked and unashamed.
Be bland, not blind. Be visually challenged!
Is this not so much more kind, so stimulating,
especially for those with glass eyes, making them
see themselves as possible achievers
in the seeing line, with a little extra effort.
Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour.
Thou wouldst get the surprise of thine life
So you wouldst.
There was thee and me and Homer and Raftery,
to say nothing of Old Harry of Scotland,
all lying back on our laurels,
calling ourselves blind as the badge of our calling,
like the sans-coulottes did with the name
their oppressors gave them on account of their lack of pants.
There were we, not realising
how we were demeaning ourselves
under the yoke of a disembowelling epithet!
The name's the Thing.
How fine and medieval that thought is!
Had your eyes been opened then, John -
no offence meant - as ours have been in this enlightened age,
would you not rather have written of Samson
as 'visually challenged in Gaza'?
'Eyeless' is so final,
so devoid of perspective!
And would you have insisted on those 'blind mouths'
in your lament for young Lycidas? -
'Mama, what's that horrible thing?'
'That, my dear, is merely a visually challenged mouth.'
Isn't that far jollier, John? -
John - You there?
Why did this flowering of the neo-euphemism come so late?
How could the world have done without it for so long,
and still staggered on?
Remember those Indian files of hand-on-shoulder soldiers,
fixed for ever in sepia,
those blinded, gassed and ghastly men
forever walking the half-drowned duckboards
of the Great Great War.
Ah, if only easeful, useful euphemese
had been at their elbows then:
'Oi reckon we're crippled for loif, mate!'
'Ah, no, Bob. It's just that we're Differently Abled now,
thanks to this 'ere Great War.
Blessing in disguise, war is, when you come to think of it.
Never a door's shut but another opened, thanks be to God.'
Roll on the sight-screens,
things are coming to a head!
On with the scream-filters and the murder mufflers -
all the nice words for nasty doings.
Maniac surgeons are at work;
the mess is terrible.
Morticians of consummate cosmetic skills are called for!
No epileptics need apply.
Eclectics should.
Yankensteins of word-engineering!
Here is your chance!
No, not like Joyce.
Joyce was a cross-breeder of words,
no manufacturer of sterile gags,
a grand master of the mixed breed,
letter-loose of mighty mongrels upon the world,
oozers each of history out of every pore,
making the botched graftings of the Politically Correct
appear what they are - botched graftings.
©Renate Mitchell.
May not be reproduced in any form online
or offline without explicit written permission.