Lay Grouter, Four Fingers Full

Yet Grouter had earlier made good his escape

Before the chair it was sent to the tree

Intent as he was on debauchery hale

It served him best, of the court, to be free

He had walked hardly far when from high up above

He was hailed in a whispering drone

By a single-winged angel all painted in grey

Sat atop of a painted grey throne

With the crowd in the court and the street therefore clear

The angel felt able to speak

So he called to young Grouter to climb to his roost

Where the wind made the lead gables creak

But the climbing was awkward for all over the brick

Was a thin shining sheen of fresh prayer

And though sticky as spit on a salesman’s palm

Young Grouter was soon in the air

Though light as a promise received from a Lord

Young Grouter did nonetheless fall

And struck hard a preacher’s wife square on the head

Who sent up a quarrelsome call

Young man, if in seeking to travel about

The preacher’s wife said with a scowl

Pray remember that roads are the beast that is best

Unless the beast that you are, is an owl

And I see by your manner and the boots that you wear

That you come from without, from a cave

That further your eyes that do twitch back and forth

Mark you out as a burgling knave

Our Grouter protested and fell to one knee

That his eyes could not help but to loom

Because in a cave there is never much light

And that light that there is, is all gloom

As for his stoop and his quick little hands?

Young Grouter did not wish to be rude

But his clothes like his hands were terribly small

And if once he stood straight, he’d be nude

The preacher’s wife sighed before pinching his cheek

That hung from his skull like a bag

And asked when our Grouter had lastly been fed?

And if all his clothes were a rag?

He bent and he whispered into her round ear

That his garments were made up of rips

That his meals were marked by what else remained

Of toenails, and dandruff and lips

The youngest, he hissed, of a very large brood

The youngest of fell Mother Droop

Who treasured him best for the length of his bones

And the stock they would make for a soup