Sometimes, when verse is awfully light,
we wince and think, This isn’t right.
The world’s a vile and awful place!
It’s not a thing to mock with grace-
ful wit and wordplay. It is wrong
to fashion misery into song.
And surely, sometimes, that is true:
there are some awful things that you
would never think of making light of.
We all know that. Yet still, in spite of
the feelings some might have, we do it,
as if we have been driven to it.
When things are just, in general, bad,
that is the state we’ve always had
and always will, so why not take
that general state of things and make
it, if not funny, something bearable,
in verse that makes it seem less terrible.
