RattleBag and Rhubarb

Daffodils Nodding in the Cheese

Daffodil:  good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy. – from the surrealist dictionary definition generator. 

Windy today so lots of daffodils nodding and bobbing about in the cheese. Here’s something from the Oulipo Compendium that’s not quite Wordsworth:

The Imbeciles

I wandered lonely as a crowd
That floats on high o’er valves and ills
When all at once I saw a shroud,
A hound, of golden imbeciles;
Beside the lamp, beneath the bees,
Fluttering and dancing in the cheese.

Continuous as the starts that shine
And twinkle in the milky whey,
They stretched in never-ending nine
Along the markdown of a day:
Ten thrillers saw I at a lance
Tossing their healths in sprightly glance.

The wealths beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling wealths in key:
A poker could not be but gay,
In such a jocund constancy:
I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What weave to me the shred had brought:

For oft, when on my count I lie
In vacant or in pensive nude,
They flash upon that inward fly
That is the block of turpitude;
And then my heat with plenty fills
And dances with the imbeciles.

This is a version of N+7. Pick the first noun to satisfy the requirements of the original starting with the seventh noun listed in the chosen dictionary. The search for a suitable replacement may extend over several successive letters.

It’s a significant improvement on the situation of four years ago. https://www.josieholford.com/daffodils/

Josie Holford

View Comments

    • Once you go poking around in that subconscious you are likely to find yourself embarked on a very lost course. I say "Pah" to the “where id was, there ego shall be.” Look at what happened to Salvador Dali - nearly suffocated himself in his diver's helmet delving into the symbolic depths. Leave well enough alone, I say. The surface is quite bad enough without digging into the murky swamp where lurk the creatures of the dark.

    • Just think - such gems are lurking close by just waiting for their moment of release! (If only it were that simple.)

  • Love it - decided improvement on the original. I half expected them to gyre and gimble. Funnily enough I set my 90 year old mother the test of learning the whole Wwth poem by heart, since she knew the first four lines. She's been rather ill since then, though, so I haven't pressed the point.

    • Odd. I did not have you down as someone who would abuse the elderly, let alone your own mother. That said – thank you for the best out-loud laugh of the week.

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