Game
Down came the axe and found my head, which made very pretty beef. I stayed and played a dark stone, being round and great.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 23 January 1659/60.
Dave Bonta
SourceLicence:CC BY-SA 4.0
Down came the axe and found my head, which made very pretty beef. I stayed and played a dark stone, being round and great.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 23 January 1659/60.
The poem opens with a violent act: an axe comes down and finds the speaker's head. But the tone is oddly casual. The head becomes "very pretty beef," as if the speaker is looking at their own body the way a butcher would, with a flat, almost cheerful detachment. The title, "Game," adds to this.
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