BE KIND TO THE BUTCHER!
To the Editor, Sir,-Could you find a small space, I wonder, for this "humorous" poem somewhere between Aunt Daisy’s splendid recipes and "While the Kettle Boils"? If it sounds more like "tripe" than poetry, well I understand that there is a place for such material in every newspaper office, To the Housewife I wonder if ever a housewife when she sees the butcher-man Stop suddenly at her garden gate and hop from his loaded van, Does pause to think for a moment of the way she orders meat | (Or the way he is insulted as he hurries from street to street)? There isn’t a living husband who would not answer fartly, If spoken to too rudely, or if questioned he was so smartly. Yes, surely when we think of it apologies should quiver Upon the lips of one who asks, "Oh, have you got a liver?" Then, as he travels briskly along the country lanes He never knows who next will ask, " Now, have you any brains?" Yet, I think of all the women our businessman must dread, Is she who queries sourly, "Well, have you a fat pig’s head?" Just think of the rejoinder which might be at him flung: "Well, since you've not the head of a pig, do you happen to have a tongue?" Let us be more like the butcher who on work is so intent That he doesn’t.notice rudeness, where rudeness isn’t meant. /
J.
LEWIS
(Collingwood)
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19401025.2.56
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 70, 25 October 1940, Page 41
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246BE KIND TO THE BUTCHER! New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 70, 25 October 1940, Page 41
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