ON SEING THE MICROPHONE ,

TO THE AUDIENCE, AT A POETRY RECITAL

What – does this thing appear again to night

This Pegasus to passenger my words 

Purporting to increase their sound and sense

For this distinguished, way-out audience?

Have I not lung enough, or caverned mouth

No wavelength that’ll catch the well-turned ear

No consonants to catapult, no vowels

To boom and echo from out my very bowels?

What is this aerial wizardry I hold

This flying sorcery that I must use

When Melba, Garrick, Siddons and Caruso

And Henry Fifth at Agincourt didn’t do so?

Am I a mincing Antony of the box

With tonic solfa bait to hook the mass

“Frens, Romans, Coun’rymen – alack, alack,

You Romans, can you hear me at the back?”

I tell you this – if I should whisper… mouse!

Yet squeak with skill, that skilful squeak should reach

From English hills to Austria’s snow-clad Tyrol

There to resound in every schnitzled earole.

Did I say MOUSE? Yon golden-headed lass

With golden shin short-topped by generous skirt

Did you ear, quivering with imagined scare

The pattern of tiny feet beneath your chair?

Tremble not, sweetheart – sure I only jest

And formulate no false philosophy.

Make no recoil – don’t join the lady grousers,

Mice are not sexist – they also run up trousers.

But stay this shuttlecock of flimsy words

I have more solid things to offer you.

If it’s to be, or not to be the mike it

Is up to you, the audience, As You Like It.