2010/09/08 Desk Text Poem by Margaret Alice

I love the scene in Mary
Poppins where all the
stuffy bankers dance
together to illustrate
banking terms

Terry Pratchett upped
the ante by making
venerable wizards dance
in ecstasy to Buddy’s
music with rocks in

The delights afforded by
watching staid old men
unwinding in the dance
a hundredfold augmented
by the hilarity of this
magical scene

Wizards throwing one another
over their shoulders, twirling
around, somersaulting over
people’s heads, swinging
people around

In contrast to Lord Vetinari,
the Patrician, quietly reading
music that never get played
because it stays pure, written
down in dots, caught
between lines

And Beau Nidle, Death’s
new name, in the Klatchian
Foreign League, buried in the
pit to try to forget, finding
it extremely dull, not
torture at all

Driving the Sergeant to
distraction – and you
think life consists of the
text on my desk, rules
and regulations?


‘Soul Music’ – Terry Pratchett
Corgi Books 1977, Quoted from
Pages 167,171 and 172