Let’s go back, back into the misty reaches of my parents’ basement, to rediscover the very first poem to spring from the mind of a five-year-old. An epic adventure about the search for love.
Do I detect hints of greatness, even then? Or was it just sexism? Whichever it was, you can blame the classics.
How to Find a Wife
by Sarah Silvey
There was once a man who had no life,
He didn’t have as much as a wife!
So he sailed, night and day,
And would always hear his mother say,
“If you shant have a wife,
A soul shall kill you with a knife.”
His mother told him such strange things,
Like giant toads with devils wings.
She liked to give him such a fright,
And somehow convinced him his father was a knight.
He tried to show her he outgrew that now,
She still even called him her little cow,
But his real name was David, David Bough.
David found women miles around,
But none sank his heart down to the ground.
So he sailed on, and how many he found? None.
David heard from a crazy man,
That on the beaches there was sand
And on the sand there were pretty girls,
With goldielocks and golden curls.
So he went there and found it true
With pretty eyes, the darkest blue.
Then he found one,
And love was true,
With pretty eyes, the darkest blue.
Her name was Rose
Which fit her so
And her hair was made of gold
You know.
But all her beauty ruined her fate,
For all women she knew were full of hate.
She married David
Which improved both lives,
for other women knew men couldn’t get Rose
And David, of course, had a wife.
The End
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