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Nash

 

Ogden Nash
1902-1971

"Peekabo,
I Almost See You"

 

Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to
     lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes
     are all right but your arm isn't long enough
     to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since
     you said Good evening to his grandfather clock under
     the impression that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP,
     and you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and he
     says one set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and
     Keats's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello
     to strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put
     on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your
     reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because
     without them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
     years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.

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