Questions

Questions is a collaboration by Lucy Kempton and Joe Hyam. Poems are based on questions drawn from an agreed starting question and formed by answers, which contain and inspire the next questions. In response to Lucy's first question, Joe kicks off. This follows our earlier work in Compasses, archived here, where Lucy's photographs illustrate Joe's series of 50 sonnets under the title Handbook for Explorers.

Thursday 16 April 2009

Who will police the policemen?

Grinning like a nutcracker, hell's bells
jangling on his cap, he knows
just how to deal with them
- takes more than a bungling cop
to keep him down!

Slapstick's the way to do it;
leaving mayhem and murder, infanticide,
stolen sausages and the crocodile, all
behind him, with the hangman's noose
still dangling up ahead, he goes
to and fro in the earth,
and up and down in it.
Pleased as Punch.

Whence comest thou?

3 comments:

Lucas said...

Lovely invocation of the knarled and painted puppet loved by children the world over, once upon a time. Not sure where to see him now?
"That's the way to do it!"

Rouchswalwe said...

your "Pleased as Punch" is a brilliant line. Tri-Tra-Trullala, Kasperle ist wieder da!

The Crow said...

(o)