Try To Love A British Pedant Poem by Linda Hepner

When he reads he snorts and loudly groans,
and weeps at multi-exclamation points.
He cries in pain as if his ageing bones
are snapping when a clause goes 'and', no joints,

and on and on it runs and weeps and moans
and horrible! infinitives are split
to boldly forge new careless semitones
inventing subtle verbs a man with wit

could reinvent with Latin, French or Greek.
These sins against the sentence make me sob,
and make my brain go soft and wet and weak.
A writer without grammar is a slob.

So sayeth I, but I am quite a freak
belonging to a century long agone.
Oh, I add, civilization is up the creek,
and how I hate a beat that's off. Not on!

LRH
1.12.15