Nathaniel L.
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O thou most plump and philosophic Turnip bright,
Whose spherical majesty outshines the stew,
Attend mine ode, inflated past all right,
With sesquipedalian reverence most undue.
When first I glimpsed thy vegetative grace
Reclining in yon earthenware tureen,
Astonishment did pirouette apace
Within my cerebrum’s moist and wrinkled sheen.
Thy epidermal contour, faintly mauve,
Doth shame the blushing aurora’s timid flare;
And like some corpulent, contemplative dove
Thou brood’st in starchy, sacramental air.
What alchemy of subterranean night
Conspired to puff thee to such bulbous state?
What cosmic, agronomic appetite
Did bid thee swell with tuberous pride innate?
Perchance thou dream’st—O root of rotund thought—
Of courtly banquets in a monarch’s hall,
Where gravy, thick with destiny, is brought
To christen thee high Potentate of All.
Yet lo! Alas! When knives with glitt’ring spite
Descend in gastronomic pageantry,
Thy lofty pomposity takes flight
In cubes of bland ubiquity.
Thus do I moralize thy tragic doom,
O Turnip, orbicular and sublime:
That all inflated grandeur meets a spoon,
And all grandiloquence dissolves in brine.