Ogden Nash
Pamela and I have a particular affection for the poetry of Ogden Nash. For Christmas this year I bought her a 5-volume set of his poetry. This morning, while getting ready to leave, she found this poem written for husbands. I thought it was blog-worthy. I hope you enjoy it.
What do you do when you’ve wedded a girl all legal and lawful,
And she goes around saying she looks awful?
When she makes deprecatory remarks about her format,
And claims that her hair looks like a doormat?
When she swears that the complexion of which you are so fond
Looks like the bottom of dried-up pond?
When she for whom your affection is not the least like Plato’s
Compares her waist to a badly tied sack of potatoes?
When she thinks that every hour is the hour at which avoir-dupois begins,
And keeps discovering nonexistent double and triple chins?
Oh, who wouldn’t rather be on a flimsy bridge with a hungry lion at one end and a hungry tiger at the other end and hungry crocodiles underneath
Than confronted by their dearest making remarks about her own apperance through clenched teeth?
Oh, who wouldn’t rather drown in deepest ocean or crackle in the most furious fire,
Than be in a position where if you say Yes darling, you don’t love her any more, and if you say No darling, you are hypocritical liar?
Why won’t they believe that the reason they find themselves the mother of your children is because you think of all the looks in the world, theie looks are the nicest?
Why must we continue to be thus constantly ordealed and crisised?
I think it high time these hoity-toity ladies were made to realize that when they impugn their face and their ankles and their waist
They are thereby insultingly impugning their tasteful husbands’ impeccable taste.
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