Do Wah Diddy Diddy

by Manfred Mann


Shoehorning

Oh, when only poets wrote
on hills overlooking Rome,
oh, how the harp and goat horn
filled with alcohol inspired.
Oh, what wine and dried sheep meat
must have tasted to dry, salty lips
that read aloud
to philosophy filled citizens
in dirty togas or itchy wool.
Before the Psychomachia
and before the Dream of the Rood
oh, when there were poems
about truth, undiluted, pure,
sure to knock you off your
perhaps fungus infected, surely
hygienically neglected feet and make you
dizzy drunk with meaning.