American English, Shakespeare’s idiot,
Subject-verb-object: plod, plod, plod;
This monosyllabic simpleton, dear God,
What can be done to gussy up or pretty it?
A 3-legged stool: I – Me – Mine
Waits for some milkmaid long gone;
A cowboy herds the homonyms along —
Nouns and verbs — one promiscuous line,
And scarcely knows that declensions decline,
For rarely do slovenly speakers repeat
Or focus where the son’s rays meat.
Somehow the sexless English conceiver
Writes love poems, even odd odes are tender —
Retaining, oh the wonder, neither
Endings for conjugation nor gender.
Or focus where the son’s rays meat. – From an old textbook definition of “paranomasia” (pun): Three sons, having acquired a cattle ranch, asked their mother to suggest a name for it. She replied: “Call it Focus, because that is where the sun’s rays meet.” (sons raise meat)