The First Hundred Years

as posted on... the Cheese Wall of America

mad dogs & other men

by TS Idiot 

I

when the soul of Hamlet's father

haunting the walls at Elsinore

told the prince of his murderer

what Tudor audiences saw

in that ancient tale of brother

hate was fable enshrined in law

Cain & Abel in other words

though Hamlet's vengeance is perverse

to be or not to be he hurls

equivocations at the curse

from Yorick's skull a flock of birds

flies out to stay his hand from worse

but the mad dog of revenge is no more

than brother Seti killed Osiris for

II

with the entry of the French Horns

in the scherzo of Beethoven's

Eroica the world was told

sit up & have a care to hold

on to your pants Napoleon's

armies will drain the swamp of crowned

heads & the dogs who scraped & fawned

but Ludwig scratched to a great MAN

on the manuscript's outer fold

where Bonaparte was once writ bold

for as emperor the new plan

was replaced by the old reformed

& still like men to hounds those horns are heard

wherever music lovers have gathered

III

they may not be the choicest words

used by an emperor elect

sorry scratch that for precedent

but the style of all his content's

appropriate in this respect

on TV nothing sounds absurd

pure & simple was the contest

arcane the process what the heck

goes with the territory learn

from his example the intern

has four years to triumph or wreck

& this candidate was the best

mad dog sir it was the name that swayed it

mad dog yes he's the best mad dog he's great

Down Boy!