The Dildo

The Dildo is a big heavy cumbersome sort of bird,
Supposed extinct for many years but its voice is often heard
Booming and blasting over the marshes and moors
With the harsh note of Lesbos and the great outdoors.
The Dildo wears tweed skirts and Twenties elastic-thighed knickers
And smokes black cheroots and still calls films ‘the flickers’.
It wears pork-pie hats and is really one of the boys,
It has initiated many pretty girls into forbidden joys.

It has an eye-glass in one eye, and its bad-taste jokes are myriad,
Such as the one about Emily Bronte’s Last Period,
And a good many others that are best left unsaid,
Buried in the old laughter, as the dead bury the dead.

The Dildo is quite frankly worshipped by some members of the community,
Who consider that even its name cannot be taken in vain with impunity
As it hops heavily about on its one wooden leg –
But most real Nature-lovers think it should be taken down a peg.

—

Gavin Ewart (1916-1995)

Gavin Ewart, Selected Poems; Hutchinson, London; ISBN 0091801710