Ogden Nash ~ Peekabo, I Almost See You
Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it,
But there comes a day when your eyes are all right but your
arm long enough to hold the telephone book where you can read it,
And your friends get jocular, so you go to the oculist,
And of all your friends he is the joculist,
So over his facetiousness let us skim,
Only noting that he has been waiting for you ever since you
said Good evening to his grandfather clock under the
impression that it was him,
And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP,
and you say Well, why SHRDNTLU QWERTYOP? and
he says one set of glasses won't do.
You need two.
One for reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and
Keats's "Endymion" with,
And the other for walking around without saying Hello to
strange wymion with.
So you spend your time taking off your seeing glasses to put
on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your
reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because
without them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such misshaps, they would try the patience of an
ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.
Copyright © by Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt.
Source: http://www.ogdennash.org/poems/peekabo_i_almost_see_you.htm
