The Mariner from days of yore
(you may have read the tragic tale)
spent his pathetic days ashore
and, to all passers-by, he’d wail
about a curse, and have them check the albatross slung round his neck.
A grim and sad yarn, poor old goat: but that’s what Mr Coleridge wrote.
There is an update, I must tell:
a sequel, to be more precise,
a story that does not end well,
that really isn’t very nice.
By some fluke chance, the albatross, thought dead, woke up, and it was cross.
It started on a pecking spree: it pecked his arm, it pecked his knee,
it pecked him all about the head,
until the ancient sailor cried:
"Get off vile brute, I thought you dead!"
He fought it off but, though he tried,
no strategy was efficacious: the albatross was so tenacious.
At last, to gain his liberty, the Mariner fled back to sea.
Richard Fleming
