Rations
dinner of air for an old man
I eat and eat and come home thinner
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 20 February 1669.
Dave Bonta
SourceLicence:CC BY-SA 4.0
dinner of air for an old man
I eat and eat and come home thinner
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 20 February 1669.
In just a few lines, the poem sets up a paradox: a meal that feeds no one. The "dinner of air" is offered "for an old man," and the phrase can be read two ways. It might be a meal meant for an old man, or a joke about what an old man is expected to settle for. Either way, the food is empty.
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