One meme lead to another...

Firstly the poetry meme, from mirrorshard,
Pick one of your favourite poems and post it, then tag others to do the same.
Enforced memeage is a bit of a pain, so no specific tags. Just go for it ;)

I was going to wait til I got home and check the pome books, but then tyrell informs us that it is LJ Rabbit Hole day. So really, this was the only choice - and is genuinely one of my favourite poems. I used to be able to recite the whole thing. These days, I can only manage snatches alas.

( Jabberwocky )

For those new to it, an explanation

You couldn't make this shit up...

So, after tyrell's post on LJ Rabbit Day, I was pondering something suitably silly to write (well it is Friday). But I looked at the news first and I can't really top it.

Only In Ireland

Lock up your donkeys! The Donkey Rustlers are coming!
Yes, organised gangs of Donkey Stealers are roaming the country stealing donkeys. Particularly pregnant donkeys (which is actually quite worrying). They're so organised they only do it towards payday - the donkeys always seem to go missing towards the end of the month.

They seem to turn up in Limerick, so its not impossible it's some bizarre bartering system where people still expect to be paid in donkeys, presumably for tarmacking your drive or something.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4653400.stm

Only In Ireland, Northern

Ah the heady taste of peace and reconcilliation. Learning to love each other and live side by side in harmony. Not fighting at all over very stupid pointless things after centuries of bitter wrangling over the self-same stupid and pointless things. Like what the place you live is actually called.
Except of course in Derry. And Londonderry (when I was little I thought these were indeed 2 seperate places).
Wars of Words are raging yet AGAIN over what to call the city and the OS have managed to offend just about everyone by calling it one thing on the cover of a map and the other on the inside. Alas that they couldn't, like everyone else, employ one of the cunning alternatives.
Did you know you can't get a 'derry/londonderry' bus? You get the Maiden City Flyer. You shop in Foyleside and if your lorry falls off the bridge, you contact the Foyle Road Saftey Committee, despite the fact that Foyle is of course, a river not a road.
I'd have thought, given the media practice of alternating, this would have please them, but no, everyone hates it. And then wonder why no-one either wants to visit or takes any of NI politics very seriously at all.

I vote we give up altogether and just call it Muff. Muff is a much happier place.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=677143

More Poems!

Since my previous choice was, apparently, too well known ;p

V. hard to chose one, but this is one I loved so much when I was Young that my Best Friend Lisa stole the book it was in from the school library at, according to the inscription, exactly 11.35pm on Friday 19th Dec 1989 and gave it to me for Christmas. I had completely forgotten she'd done that.

( untitled poem, by e.e.cummings )

( a bonus )

ION this is very nice champagne.