Futility Closet

“Simple English”

Posted in Poems by Greg Ross on September 24th, 2009

Ofttimes when I put on my gloves,
I wonder if I’m sane,
For when I put the right one on,
The right seems to remain
To be put on–that is, ‘t is left;
Yet if the left I don,
The other one is left, and then
I have the right one on.
But still I have the left on right;
The right one, though, is left
To go right on the left right hand
All right, if I am deft.

– Ray Clarke Rose, collected in Wallace Rice, A Book of American Humorous Verse, 1903