[Newspoetry] Snarks in Iraq

[John Newmark]

NOW I understand
There ARE Snarks in Iraq.
But they're Boojums.
And whenever someone finds a Snark, they simply disappear.  
It's all Lewis Carroll's fault!

          549"It's a Snark!" was the sound that first came to their ears, 
          550    And seemed almost too good to be true. 
          551Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers: 
          552    Then the ominous words "It's a Boo-" 


          553Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air 
          554    A weary and wandering sigh 
          555Then sounded like "-jum!" but the others declare 
          556    It was only a breeze that went by. 


          557They hunted till darkness came on, but they found 
          558    Not a button, or feather, or mark, 
          559By which they could tell that they stood on the ground 
          560    Where the Baker had met with the Snark. 


          561In the midst of the word he was trying to say, 
          562    In the midst of his laughter and glee, 
          563He had softly and suddenly vanished away--- 
          564    For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

-- 
John Newmark
gavroche at gmail.com

On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 15:03:12 q-0500, emerick at chorus.net
<emerick at chorus.net> wrote:

> Basically, there were no snarks in Iraq, never have been for years, and no snark production facilities or programs of any kind had any but the most minute existence -- but we still think Saddam dreamed about having snarks, and talked about them constantly.