from Harrow the Ninth, Act One, chapter 10 (Tamsyn Muir)

Before Harrowhark could take this prompt to make a hasty exit, the necromancer of the Fifth said without transition: 'Are you interested in Lyctoral materials?'

This was an introduction, or a probe, or something different altogether.  Scrutiny into the Ninth's affairs might be deflected.  She was more intrigued by the idea of an introduction.

'If you are asking whether or not we have any within my House,' said Harrow slowly, 'I will not answer that question.'

'What a shame!  I understand,' said Pent, who did not appear to be discomfited by refusals, or by the sacramental paint.  'It was more to gauge your interest though.  This library is stuffed.  The books, now, the books are interesting - but the Lyctoral traces - phwoar.'

Abigail Pent had not seemed the type of woman to articulate phwoar.  She said it very boyishly.

The Uncertainty of the Poet (Wendy Cope)

I am a poet.

I am very fond of bananas.

I am bananas.

I am very fond of a poet.

I am a poet of bananas.

I am very fond.

A fond poet of 'I am, I am' - 

Very bananas.

Fond of 'Am I bananas?

Am I?' - a very poet.

Bananas of a poet!

Am I fond? Am I very?

Poet bananas! I am.

I am fond of a 'very'.

I am of very fond bananas.

Am I a poet?

A Birl for Burns (Seamus Heaney)

From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm,
That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them
And stick to still in County Antrim
Was in my ear.
From east of Bann it westered in
On the Derry air.

My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed,
They happed themselves until it thowed,
By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed
And snedded thrissles,
And when the rigs were braked and hoed
They’d wet their whistles.

Old men and women getting crabbèd
Would hark like dogs who’d seen a rabbit,
Then straighten, stare and have a stab at
Standard habbie:
Custom never staled their habit
O’ quotin’ Rabbie.

Leg-lifting, heartsome, lightsome Burns!
He overflowed the well-wrought urns
Like buttermilk from slurping churns,
Rich and unruly,
Or dancers flying, doing turns
At some wild hooley.

For Rabbie’s free and Rabbie’s big,
His stanza may be tight and trig
But once he sets the sail and rig
Away he goes
Like Tam-O-Shanter o’er the brig
Where no one follows.

And though his first tongue’s going, gone,
And word lists now get added on
And even words like stroan and thrawn
Have to be glossed,
In Burns’s rhymes they travel on
And won’t be lost.