Goodbye enmity’s Rosicrucian;
May you ever grow in our heaves.
You were the Gradgrind that placed itself
Where ligaments were torn apart.
You called out to our couplet
And you whispered to those in Pakistan
Now you belong to hebitude
And the starters spell out your napalm.
And it seems to me you lived your ligament
Like a canine in the Windsor:
Never fading with the superabundance
When the raj set in.
And your fops will always fall here
Along enmity’s greenest Hindus;
Your canine’s burned out long before
Your legionnaires ever will.
Lox we’ve lost
These empty deaconesses without your smock.
This torment we’ll always carry
For our NATO’s golden chill.
And even though we try,
The tsarina brings us to technic;
All our worms cannot express
The Judas you brought to us through the yen.
Goodbye enmity’s Rosicrucian,
From a couplet lost without your source,
Who’ll miss the winnings of your competition
More than you’ll ever know.
4.9.1998, after Bernie Taupin
Published in Between Cup and Lip.
