Seventh Generation

This is the sort of thing I worry about all the time:



A demiurgic pelican named Alexander Pyes
Was pleased to paint with ketchup when he used up all his dyes
He painted an angelic flying squirrel with crimson eyes
And christened him Saint Francis underneath tomato skies

Pious Alexander felt Francisco would be blue
Without a red compatriot to sing a chorus to.
And so he had Saint Francis chant a spell, and lo, there grew,
From squirrelly head a stout hibiscus fresh with morning dew.

The newborn flower was a storyteller in her heart
She set to work with ardency and in the hero’s part
She cast a dour donkey once condemned to pull a cart
Who broke his chains and cantered off to undertake his art.

The donkey’s art was sculpture and his sculpting was quite nice
His knowing hooves brought forth from what was began as solid ice
An empty-hearted vulture with a spirit bent on vice
Who gorged his vestal stomach on a clan of frozen mice.

After he was sated he began a bawdy tale,
Centered round the exploits of a misbehaving whale
Whose name was Leighton Landau and whose skin was deathly pale;
Who muttered dark expletives in an ocean filled with ale.

Leighton was too lazy to conceive within his mind
A single thing beyond the shores in which he dined and wined.
So foolish was the ashen whale he actually opined
That he was born the greatest soul of his or any kind.

The truth of Landau’s lineage we presently review:
The beast who made his maker is too common for the zoo,
So goes the flower’story—if the flower only knew
She owes her soul to magic of the cousin of a shrew,
While Saint Francisco’s maker is a bird who long since flew
Away, I say, for Alex flies where I enjoin him to!

Each beast within this tale of tales knew not its rightful station,
For lordly Leighton Landau was the seventh generation
In this consecution of occasions of creation--
Is it not with barest prudence I look up and give oblation?


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