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Filthy Oaths and Curses

Felix Dennis
August 12, 2001
Mandalay, Mustique
Unpublished
Arrow
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Filthy oaths and curses
  Will make a fool of you.
It’s true! And what is worse is
  They’re habit forming, too!

You cannot make silk purses
  By sowing sow’s behinds;
Oh, filthy oaths and curses
  Are signs of tiny minds.

At a Mandalay dinner attended by Ralph Gonsalves, the new Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and his lovely wife Eloise, the conversation turned to poetry.  Ralph is a poetry buff and once wrote out in longhand his one hundred favourite poems of all time in a book as a present for his wife.  While we were swapping lines and yarning, the idea emerged among the ladies present of me penning a ‘nursery rhyme’ that children could quote back at their peers when confronted with swearing and bad language.  Feeling like a total hypocrite (my own language is often peppered with expletives) I concocted the above.