Mørtensen, Erick By Name Poem by Linda Hepner

Mørtensen, Erick by name
Resurrected was never the same;
When raised from the dust
With raisers discussed
How Estonia needed some fame.

Compösers are German and French
And the British have Dickens and Dench,
We Estonians need
With Ólympian speed
To climb from our cöld möldy trench

And join with the Mahlers and Freuds
And Kafkas and Bernsteins and Boyds
But we haven’t a clue
What to draw or to dö
To have Lloyd-Wright or Lewis or Floyd.

We haven’t got Renoirs or Braques,
Or writers like Oliver Sachs,
Corbusier, Villon
Or Thomas or Dylan
Or even Karl Marx or Pete Max.

How do we bring Øscars to us?
How do we make Nöbel a fuss
Without artsy genes
Or purchasing means
To jump on the museum bus?

Let’s listen to Møzart and say
The guy’s an Estonian, hey!
Those Austrians claimed
He was wrongfully named
And whisked him with $$$ away.

Then Shåkespeare was truly from Tallinn
And Rə mbrandt from Tartu; appallin’
How Tǖ rner was taken
Like Bizet and Bacon
Their theft of our art is quite gallin’.

But once though a poet named Gę rsh,
A Hĕ iligõ rabbi named Hirsch,
And a Crøydön gal Lin
Said enough of this sin
And drank some Estonian kirsch:

They wrote on the websites the trǖ th
That Poussinn and Bevann and Rǖ th
Were all born Estonian,
And in the Smithsonian,
Best wishes, dear Wåtson,
From Sleuth!


LRH
2.26.08
With apologies to all Estonians and finicky purists!