‘Oh, pen!’
says me.
‘I shall always remember that day,
the seventeenth Thursday in May,
nineteen seventeen oh five,
when I found you
drowning in the fountain
in Rome,
in Italy,
where Rome is usually,
but not always, found.
You were plucked from an inky depth,
and retrieved from the promise of death
by my writing hand.
Upon dry land,
you came back to your senses,
gasped of the air,
and nibbled past tenses
like a pro.
Oh, pen,
now, when your fluids are almost dry,
why
do I find the thought
and action difficult,
of keeping you
when your purpose has flown by?
It is hard
to keep a pen
that one should discard.
But, my memoirs
shall not be writ
by you,
nor am I a hypocrite;
having said, my friend,
that I wouldst keep you
until the end.’
.
NB title was taken from ‘A Murder is Announced’ by Agatha Christie.
Graeme Sandford 