May 16, 2025
More in One Hundred Poems 007 There is no word for Daffodil on Vogon
As readers of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy will know, Vogon Poetry is the third worst in the universe. The poem below is a rare translation of a short piece by Sqincezk, as yet unpublished because it fails to evoke the proper responses. There was some talk of plagiarism about this work, though it was generally disbelieved as nobody would believe a poet called "Wordsworth" could be anything but the invention of a deranged mind.
As I tchicked turgid as a louse
That bloated, kribs on knurbled claw.
I saw a decomposing corpse,
Quite full of scabrous parasites,
Beside the slime, beneath the skin
Writhing and retching in the rot.
Contagious as the dank pustules
That glimmer on a tchingrobb face,
They oozed in never-ending globs
Along the yellowness of the bones:
Ten thousand saw I in the mud
Moist, pulsating maggot eggs.
The pallid worms betwixt them squirmed,
But they out-did the worms in gore: -
A Vogon could not but be grim
In such a clammy company:
I sktezked -and sktezked -but little thought
What excess this midden to me brought.
For oft, when in my pus I ooze
In Acrid or in foetid mood,
I, regurgitating blood stained food
Embrace the thought of maggot eggs;
And then my bowel with writhing, gripes
And retches with the parasites.
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