For your edification

As you might imagine, someone who is good at translation would also have a good command of his mother tongue. The Cunning Linguist is no exception. He graciously agreed to let me post the following poem, which he wrote after a particularly enlightening Canon Law class years ago.

Extract from "Penetration at Four O'Clock",
An Anthology of Canonical Verse
published by Sucker & Warburg
Rome, 1979


Upon a rainy day in Rome
a canonist, whose weighty tome
fell open at the section "Sexto",
hardly had time to say "hey presto"
but found the stuff in this hot section
caused a canonical erection.
Whereat he flew to his confessor,
who simply kindly said "God bless yer,
I'll take that law-book from the shelf
and learn a thing or two myself!"
Which goes to prove the golden rule
that solemn clerics, when at school,
improve the morals of the nation
by giving in to ...sublimation.

(Copyright 1979: cunninglinguist)