The Founder and the Dandy

I slipped into the masons’ barn
To spit on the Founder’s tomb
Not for sweet Katleen
But for darling Oscar
Childhood chums
They went up to Trinity together
The Founder and the Dandy
Often at odds in class
And later at the bar
Oscar’s flights of delighted wit
And gold chains of pleasure
Floundering against the probity
Of strong, deaf ears
The founder dapper even then
In pencil sharp overcoats
Of grey, Wesleyan broadcloth.
And later a close friend
Would say in his defence:
The best you can say
Is he was really no zealot
Just a shady lawyer
On the make.
He who loathed this town
And its scaly protectors
Though they claimed his flesh
When it finally eluded him
To his sure eternal irritation
While Oscar sleeps in gay Paree
With Jim Morrison
Guileless a chickenhawk
As ever wept crocodile tears
Tended by the pure of heart
Pressing roses into the gravel
And here; provincial burghers
Garland the Founder’s tomb
With narcotic wreaths of poppies
And Oscar would be amused.