|
Misalliance
|
| |
|
|
Flanders:
|
This may seem a rather strange subject for a song, but we have written what is perhaps a rather strange song. Anyway, it's called "Misalliance".
|
|
|
|
|
Both:
|
The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
|
|
|
And many other creepers do the same.
|
|
|
But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one,
|
|
|
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rooted on either side a door, one of each species grew,
|
|
|
And raced towards the window-ledge above.
|
|
|
Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew,
|
|
|
Where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed bindweed,
|
|
|
"Oh, let us get married, if our parents don't mind, we'd
|
|
|
Be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined, we'd
|
|
|
Live happily ever after" said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
To the honeysuckle's parents it came as a shock.
|
|
|
"The bindweeds," they cried, "are inferior stock!
|
|
|
They're uncultivated, of breeding bereft,
|
|
|
We twine to the right and they twine to the left."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Said the anti-clockwise bindweed to the clockwise honeysuckle,
|
|
|
"We'd better start saving, many a mickle macks a muckle,
|
|
|
Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck'll
|
|
|
Take a turn for the better" said the bindweed to the honeysuckle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
A bee who was passing remarked to them then,
|
|
|
"I've said it before and I'll say it again,
|
|
|
Consider your offshoots, if offshoots there be,
|
|
|
They'll never receive any blessing from me".
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Poor little sucker, how will it learn,
|
|
|
When it is climbing, which way to turn?
|
|
|
Right, left, what a disgrace,
|
|
|
Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed,
|
|
|
"It seems they're against us, all fate has combined.
|
|
|
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Colombine,
|
|
|
Thou art lost and gone forever, we shall never intertwine".
|
|
|
|
|
|
Together, they found them, the very next day,
|
|
|
They had pulled up their roots and just shrivelled away.
|
|
|
Deprived of that freedom for which we must fight,
|
|
|
To veer to the left or to veer to the right!
|