A little poem

• A happy vicar I might have been
• Two hundred years ago
• To preach upon eternal doom
• And watch my walnuts grow;
• But born, alas, in an evil time,
• I missed that pleasant haven,
• For the hair has grown on my upper lip
• And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
• And later still the times were good,
• We were so easy to please,
• We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
• On the bosoms of the trees.
• All ignorant we dared to own
• The joys we now dissemble;
• The greenfinch on the apple bough
• Could make my enemies tremble.
• But girl's bellies and apricots,
• Roach in a shaded stream,
• Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
• All these are a dream.
• It is forbidden to dream again;
• We maim our joys or hide them:
• Horses are made of chromium steel
• And little fat men shall ride them.
• I am the worm who never turned,
• The eunuch without a harem;
• Between the priest and the commissar
• I walk like Eugene Aram;
• And the commissar is telling my fortune
• While the radio plays,
• But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
• For Duggie always pays.
• I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
• And woke to find it true;
• I wasn't born for an age like this;
• Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?