Poet's Corner - The Six O'Clock News, by Norm Burnett
The Six O'Clock News
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A waft of fetid river air
Assails the reader in his chair:
A swollen beast has taken another,
Has struck at night, like Grendel's mother.
Two years had lapsed, the natives say,
Since last the monster had its way
While striding forth upon the earth
Or gliding silent in its girth.
Surely filth and fire its lair
And demon forms to serve it there,
Else how explain it mythic size,
Its cunning, its discerning eyes?
It moved with all deliberation;
It dwarfed all beasts in that brown nation.
Rising, glistening from the fen,
Emboldened now to prey on men,
It plucked a man from his canoe--
It saw that man and boat were two:
In crocodiles, this trait was new.
That much the evening paper said
Save details how the fellow bled,
Drowned at first then shook apart,
It took an hour from the start.
And I, a hemisphere away,
A white man never brought to bay,
Will rise, unmanned, without a fix,
Aimless, til the news at six.
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Last Updated: 11/23/95