If You Can Keep Your Cheese - After Rudyard Kipling Poem by Jonathan ROBIN

If you can keep your cheese while few about you
are holding onto theirs', all envy ease.
If none can get your goat nor cow could doubt you
your scent which, heaven sent, can tell true Bries
from Gorgonzola, Parmesan without you
planning for house mouse contingencies,
or short supply where larder rats may scout to
grind, compromise the tasty rind most please.

If by a whisker Cheshire follows trout to
provide fit end for sweet delicacies,
or cheddar meat meal follows leaves no gout to
blur enjoyment, taste buds' harmonies.
If desert heat no threat presents, no pout too
in winter's cold where lizard's blood would freeze,
If neither flood nor drought can mar, throughout you
may triumph over blue mould colonies.

If Gouda's better found than ground down beef bones
on steroids stuffed before sure slaughterhouse,
if neither mice nor men may match your skin tones'
cream Camembert cosmetic all'd espouse,
if cheesed off envy shows you best of best in
excelling in intelligence and nous
with magic mental mastery myelin
enhanced by microbes EDAM MADE not scouse.

If all kowtow, if none would ever flout you
remembering to bow before ‘big cheese'...
if hole in one you score in club you clout to
take golden trophy - competition flees.
If all above's accomplished taste devout, true,
while others fail to prove their expertise,
your's is the world, which elsewhere's up the spout, few
can make their time your rhyme's real_I_tease!

IF - A Writers' Guild Gild Guile Guide
If you can form and not make norms your master,
conformity, performance formal, flame.
If you inform, share, [fl]airing, flow far faster,
yet let not copyright bind tight to shame.
If you treat critic's inconstructive blaster
with humour, beat him at his game's lame claim,
take not to hea[r]t his tumour, bandage, plaster
half-heartedly, pretend [s]he never came.

If you can couple energy creative
well in advance of others in your field,
without confusing nominative, dative,
rei[g]n arguments through cogency revealed
in context, in a manner innovative,
code palimpsests from all but s[t]age concealed,
If trust in self is never compensative
reaction used when you refused to yield.

If you can link great ends with small beginnings,
and yet not brag, nor tag each copy sold,
If dialogue's more vital than piled winnings,
to trim the quill where will won't be short-sold,
If, ignorance ignored, your story's spinnings
creates a pot no Potter has outsold,
yet you can fi[e]nd the flaw, to fresh beginnings
return to steer towards horizons bold.

If you can write without cash motivation,
self-righteousness avoiding like the plague,
create consensus round an innovation
embraced by all without appearing vague,
If you can span from logic to emotion
set constant course from vested interests clear,
If you can ban all untoward commotion,
while conscience clings to all that it holds dear,

If you can set the good within you flowing
without the itch to pitch beyond kitsch brink,
If you can give the nod and wink while knowing
that mental states aren't always in the pink,
If you use inner kinks to keep on growing
without denying others' right to think,
If you continue for tomorrow sowing
refusing using methods now that stink.

If you can lead lead soldiers Caxton crafted
without kowtow before cold compromise,
If neither editor nor public shafted
the output that your inner soul supplies,
If you can improvise, provide redrafted
communication keyed to catalyze,
you'll find to your surprise that you have rafted
alone on conscious stream your just dream buys.

Writers' Real Mirror Reflection Reel
With inside out, and out, surprised, inside,
When penning verse whose end may, too, begin it,
When rhyming reel with real can coincide
Your's is the world and everything that's in it.
If you can write without cash motivation,
Self-righteousness avoiding like the plague,
Create consensus round an innovation
Embraced by all without appearing vague.
If you can scan, span logic to emotion
Set constant course from vested interests clear,
If you can ban all untoward commotion,
While conscience clings to all that it holds dear,
If rhymes may improvise, spurn prose redrafted,
Communication key to catalyze,
You'll find to your surprise that you have rafted
On stream it seems when wit reverse dream tries.

On stream it seems when wit reverse dream tries
You'll find to your surprise that you have rafted
Communication key to catalyze.
If rhyme may improvise, spurn prose redrafted
While conscience clings to all that it holds dear,
If you can ban all untoward commotion,
Set constant course from vested interests clear.
If you can scan span logic to emotion
Embraced by all without appearing vague,
Create consensus round an innovation,
Self-righteousness avoiding like the plague,
If you can write without cash motivation,
Your's is the world and everything that's in it
When rhyming reel with real can coincide
When penning verse whose end may, too, begin it,
With inside out, and out, surprised, inside!

Cropped Apologies to Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your crops when all the nation
rails, vain assailing creepy crawly bugs,
If you can thrive when most lives' reputation
is knocked for skittles, stumped by snails and slugs,
If you can sow, show though you stay surrounded
by failing harvests sere upon the stem,
where hopes unfounded, speculations grounded,
face farmers who through jealousy condemn.

If greenhouse gases can't delay your planting,
with fallow Brussels' edicts all ignored,
If CO² you compensate by chanting
an incantation to the heavens poured.
If snail trails slip upon your sensor networks,
if nano tech protects your fields' high yield
which on the Futures markets harvests net perks
that from the tax collector stay concealed.

If you can fight Monsanto's sterile sowing,
deny blight warnings, nor fear climate change,
if cash in hand exceeds debts most's greed's owing,
if you're the early bird with worms in range,
If you free farm through seasons, thank your maker
from man's pollution, safe solution find,
yours is the race, you, ace, may need pacemaker
for luck can turn, earn bridges burned behind.

Advice to an Applicant
If you can back your boss and keep on smiling,
while toning down his brash absurdities,
if, having watched the man manhandle filing,
you rearrange the folders pretty please,
if coy and charming, beautiful, beguiling,
anticipating all contingencies,
you manage new accounts, contacts redialling,
correct crass spelling, cover vagaries...

If you can keep your head while he's resiling,
evolve successful counter-strategies,
if ‘mum's the word', discrete, ignoring tyling,
from busy-bodies safe when he agrees.
If you can spend your time in reconciling
his intellectual inanities,
never upset his fragile ego, heiling
whene'er he feels the need, or profits sneeze...

If Windows easy comes, while modem dialing
to DSL migration's not a tease,
if firewall free from viruses hostiling
you clean can keep, recalling password keys,
if the above you show him recompiling
the data lost when he lacks expertise, -
yet know your place as cypher, never riling,
remembering to bow before ‘big cheese'...

If you can stand him publicly reviling
your good ideas, then claim them his with ease,
can watch while rival's ruin he's compiling
so coldly that a lizard's blood would freeze.
If when betrayed by his ambitious wiling
you triumph through innate abilities,
ignoring basic scheming, baser guiling,
you seize the precious point he never sees! ...

If you won't blush when, rash, he'll rush, exiling
your intuitions as freak fantasies,
but confidently while free-time he's whiling,
circumvent his incapacities.
Surpassing him in brains, tact, versatiling,
you never strive to swap your salaries,
but both feet on the ground, still patient, smiling,
can counteract his incoherencies...

If you are sure his image needs restyling,
select the suits that suit down to the tees,
if you are ever ready camomiling,
or sprinkling sugar, creaming, coffee, teas,
if you can trick his wayward infantiling
and censure not his immaturities,
ignore his clumsy tries at fond defling,
yet fondled, tactful, rise from off his knees...

If you take three degrees while reconciling
your private life to further Ph.D.'s,
if you can children bear without work piling
and keep them free from trouble and disease,
if you can spring his quick promotion - vile thing -
and play the game of happy families...
Your's is the job, the rest's cosmetic styling,
Oh prized princess and pride of... secret'ries!

A l'assistante de l'Indirection
Si tu peux supporter de voir tes dossiers
démolis sans souffler mot et puis reclasser,
si tu sais appuyer partout ton PDG
sans sceptique rester quant à ses qualités...

Si tu souris, beauté, sans être emmerdante,
si vive mais jamais surprise, impatiente,
le soutenant quand des contresens fous l'enchantent,
ses lubies supporter sans paroles tranchantes...

Si tu sais sans délais t'adapter au progrès,
les autres anticiper, sans jamais hésiter,
bien le préparer avec de bons conseils,
des envieux protéger ton patron hébété...

Très expérimentée, mais sans prendre de l'age,
compréhensive aider avec ses rattrapages
sans pourtant mériter accéder aux voyages
‘d'études' et aux congrès, - ces minables volages!

Si tu sais lui montrer se servir du clavier,
aux réseaux si primés vite se connecter,
de l'Internet cliquer sur l'intranet branché,
son PC débugger sans jamais se broncher...

Si sa peur du souris, du clic-clic, du mulot
tu peux sans interdits dépasser au boulot,
à ses flagrants délits trouver tout ce qu'il faut,
si tu ses buts poursuis en soufflant le bon mot...

Si tu sais compenser l'orthographe qu'il perd,
scanner, penser, noter, téléphoner, tout faire,
son planning programmer, sans être trop mémère,
le soutenir, si gaie, quand son coeur désespère...

Si tu peux accoucher à l'heure du dîner,
tes enfants élever tous en bonne santé,
ton patron remplacer - ronronnant au soleil -
sans pour autant rêver qu'on t'accorde sa paye.

Si tu sors d'H.E.C. sans prétendre à la gloire,
Sciences Po, c'est fait, sans en faire une histoire,
ou Enarque tu es, faisant dans ton pouvoir
le tout pour manier les re(i) nes du Pouvoir.

Lors mieux qu'homme d'affaires, ou chef de cabinet
mieux que tous ces experts si souvent égarés,
tu seras à tout faire une bonne rêvée,
mieux que mère, sacrée ASSISTANTE tu es!

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on';

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Rudyard Kipling 1865_1936


Biff! The same father to the same son, now grown up.

If you can keep your job when all about you
Are losing theirs (by cutting down of screw) :
If you can keep yourself - for, make no doubt you
Won't get allowance, just for you to blue.
If you can make a heap by all your winnings
Risked on outsiders backed at Kempton Park,
Don't think that you will always get your innings
And kiss your boss's daughter in the dark.

If you should risk promotion, aught should tempt ye,
Eyeing the safe when all the staff have gone,
And, jemmying it open, find it empty,
And hear the watchman growl to you, ‘Hold on! '
If you should fill the unforgiving ‘minutes'
With names of all the people you have ‘done, '
Yours is the gaol, and everything that's in ti,
And, what is more, you'll get six months, my son.
Rachel Ferguson Nymphs and Satires 1932

A London Sparrow's IF
If you c'n keep alive when li'l bleeders
Come arter t' wi' catapults an' stones;
If you c'n grow up unpertickler feeders,
An' live on rugidge, crumbs, an' ‘addock bones;
If you c'n nest up in the bloomin' gutters,
An' dodge the blinkin' tabby on the tiles;
Nip under wheels an' never git the flutters,
Wear brahn an' no bright-coloured fevver-styles;
If you ain't blown b'nippers (Cor, I'd skin ‘me!) :
Stop y'r shells nah, warm-like, under me;
Yous is the eggs an' everyfink ‘at's in ‘em -
An' when they ‘atch, yor be cock-sparrers, see?
J A LINDON

If You can Keep Your Man
If You can Keep Your Man when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
Avert a break-up when he starts to doubt you,
Without behaving like a tart or shrew;

If you can bake a cake or change a nappy,
Although you've got a good Redbrick degree,
And yet can say you're reasonably happy
When other graduate wives dropp in for tea;

If you can lose yourself in ‘To the Lighthouse',
Yet, changing books, seek first the Thriller shelf,
If you can laugh at Mrs. Mary Whitehouse,
But sometimes wince at Wednesday Plays yourself;

If you stand up for Women's Liberation,
Think sex equality long overdue,
Yet purr when men evince consideration
And in a bus or train stand up for you;

If you can be a protest march frequenter,
But sometimes think the marchers a bit queer,
Yet, spite of everything, stay left of centre,
Oh, well, who knows? You may be right, my dear.
Stanley Sharpless

If You Can Crush
If you can crush, when all your chums are cribbing,
The urge that beckons you to do the same;
Can keep your tongue from telling tales or fibbing,
And can, when others err, take all the blame.

If you can nurse a crush on dear Miss Withers,
Yet bully off with just one silent tear;
Be resolute when even Matron dithers,
And weld the House together with a cheer.

If you can foil the fiendish Russian spy-ring,
Who've ‘got a hold' upon the Head (the swine!)
And by example selfless and inspiring,
Can make those ghastly Juniors toe the line.

If you while staying virgo quite intacta,
Can scoff at those who label you a prude;
And, when you leave, can know you've never slacked or
(Except to Ma'moiselle) been flip or rude.

If you can scale such pinnacles of virtue
And earn your teachers' praises as ‘a brick',
The truth, dear girl, (I do so hate to hurt you) -
The simple truth, dear Daphne, is you're thick!
Martin Fagg

IF
If you can stand the Quest and all her antics
When all around you turn somersaults upon her deck;
And go aloft when no one has told you
And not fall down and break your blooming neck;

If you can work like Wild and also like Wuzzles
Spend a convivial night with some old bean,
And then come down and meet the Boss at breakfast
And never breathe a word of where you've been.

If you can fill the port and starboard bunkers
With fourteen tons of coal; and call it fun;
Yours is the ship and everything that's in it
And you're a marvel; not a man my son.
Ernest H Shackleton

(28 July 2007)