Spoof poem

As the whole world knows by now P-i-R's very own spoof poem (see item: Arthur Roberts - Spoofer!) is being currently considered for a mega-bucks cash prize and a whole heap of honours. The date when the fate of the poem - 'Searching for Euterpe' by Bill Jackson will be announced is less than a month away. Only trouble is that Jackson alias Williams alias Poet-in-Residence hasn't ordered a boxed set of coffee table anthologies or even one hardback book containing the poem, hasn't even ordered a gold pin, or a silver star, or a bronze wall plaque, or a crystal vase, or a cd set featuring the poem and others set to baroque music, and hasn't even booked any seats for himself and his much beloved at the annual poetry jamboree bash to be held sometime in some faraway celebrity studded location even with the temptation of cheap last-minute airline tickets and an advantageous €uro/$ollar exchange rate. It is therefore more than likely that 'Searching for Euterpe' won't make it to the mega-bucks cash prize stage, and so here it is free, gratis, at no cost for all to read, share and enjoy. And not even an expensive bound leather coffee-table book with feelgood paper for you to buy:-

'Searching for Euterpe'

In 1810* in the University of Vienna
they opened Joseph Haydn's large head
and found in there a lot of music
104 symphonies for a start
and then delving deeper they discovered
the sonatas and the masses and the concertos
and even beyond them in dark corners
they discovered innumerable lesser pieces
or pieces they believed to be of less worth
shall we say - it was all quite a performance
all those professors and their instruments
measuring the skull's bumps and working out
the cranial index but in the end the whole thing
was futile and Haydn's great head was returned
not to his body in the mausoleum
but to the jar of formaldehyde with its label
along with lesser heads lined-up like notes
on shelves along the cellar walls
where it remained in peace and pungent gas
obtained by the partial oxidation of methyl alcohol.


*The date is uncertain. Haydn's head was stolen by grave-robbers
who took it to the science department at Vienna University.
It's theft was only discovered some years later when it was decided
to move Haydn's body from its grave and take it to the mausoleum in
the Austrian town of Eisenstadt.