Our language must have seemed among the learned
Cliches of the morning press, but we earned
Our eighteen pence a line and as time passed
On Dublin papers reporters became at last.
We climbed to art exibitions [sic], book reviewers
Wrote on the drama - technique that allures;
We discovered actresses, musicians too -
Every cliché on the scale we knew.
The films! we went to French and Russian pictures
Mixing with much praise some gobshite strictures.
And we often wrote on food
We understood
Fancy food and wines. We rose to glory
On scoops that caught our latest puerile story.
Old editors died out, went mad or sinned
And we applied to blow the smelly wind
Of the editorial gasbag.
So came he
Who in this room before me you can see.
The editor stands back, others arrive
All showing hardness where my angles edge
I am cussed, they say, I who seek the normal
Will not fit in no matter how I strive.
