When the stores ran out of similes
The poets queued all night
In growing sullen anger round the block
Like a queue of poets queueing,
A line that no poet could write.
But nobody was ready for the shock
When they then ran out of metaphors
And the poets, in a rage,
Rioted in mayhem in the streets,
A riot of poets rioting.
But none would soil the page
With trash like that. Such lines dishonour Keats.
Then the non-glut of litotes
Made them be not unafraid
Oxymorons would be next! A living death!
A shortage of synecdoches
Would hancock their whole trade,
And no periphrasis left to speck their breath.
But the shortage of superlatives
Made columnists and poets
Unite, although its cause is no great mystery
For this means no “Greatest Crisis”,
Nor “Most Fearful Time We’ll Know”. It’s
Not even now “Worst Government In History”.