Arthur,

Thanks for the read. Maybe the good old days are not all they're cracked up
to be. Anyway, glad you survived the experience and learned, "how not to do
it".

Colin


----- Original Message -----
From: "arthur seeley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 8:51 AM
Subject: The Gargoyle: Marcus, Gary and Criticism


> Apropos of the recent debate on criticism, there was, still is perhaps, a
> moderator on a site, names withheld, who was unremittingly, unpleasantly
> critical of all and everything. So much so that you took it as a
compliment
> if he refrained from comment. I wrote and submitted the following. His
> screen name reminded me of a Gargoyle. He did not get the joke or at least
> he did not comment.
> The poem is not for C and C but for amusement only. The events narrated
are
> partially true in that the characters are all real although some of the
> events enjoy poetical licence.
>
> The Gargoyle,or Reflections on the Cruelty of Destructive Criticism.
>
> He took us for English Lang. and Lit.,
> Old Prut.
> Richard the Second, Silas Marner,
> The Elegy, Michael, Shanter
> and the rest, he taught to us.
>
> He billowed down corridors,
> volumes under arm,
> swish of black gown,
> a bat-winged demi-god.
>
> He terrified us with Tam,
> echoes of his eldritch Wow!,
> froze bumptious boys classrooms away.
>  Through him Old Gaunt lived
> and died again.
> I wept for the toils of Michael
> building beside a tumultuous brook.
>
> I loved the man.
> He gave me poetry
> and quiet joy for all my days.
>
> It was his dog I hated.
>
> A scabby cur!
> Part Pug, part Airedale, part Satan,
> it lurked
> under the red tasselled velvet cloth
> that covered the table in his room.
> The floor would rumble
> with throaty threats
> as you slippered over the carpet
> with your offering.
>
> One day, called away,
> he left me with the gargoyle.
> A mere child
> alone on the threshold of hell.
>  My stomach swirled
> and whimpered in dismay.
>
> Shedding stony flakes of mange,
> snorting for breath,
> through flattened nose, grumbling
> through slobber-swung jowls,
> it slouched from its lair,
> glued me to the floor
> with a snarled rictus
> of white fangs that averred
> disembowelment if I blinked;
> passed so close to me
> I smelt the sulphur of its breath,
> saw damned souls
> writhing in the fires of its eyes.
>
> It took my book,
> and all the beauty I had gathered there,
> and chewed it to a slimy plug.
>
> Prut apologised.
> The dog did not.
>
> So I love poetry
> but hate the gargoyle
> muttering distant thundery curses
> from beneath a tasselled cloth.
>