Lord and Lady Clapham are tired, and

let’s face it, enwreathed in a genteel decrepitude.

They’ve lodged in the small houses

with the people so long now.

Little people are the ones that caused the

most perturbation even though Lord and Lady C.

did over all those aeons

intuit something of the frenzied love a child can bestow.

This love lost them eyes, noses, fingers…ahhhh…lack-a-day.

The tall serious people in the bigger houses with the glasses and gloves,

not nearly so decorously kitted out as L & L,

fixed the eyes, the noses, the fingers—

fluffed the petticoat (the lady), relined the waistcoat (the lord)—

but slowly, ever so slowly (aeons of slowness apparently)

Lord and Lady Clapham learned

that those hands, not matter how kind,

where not possessed with the same love

as the small hands in the small houses with their gardens,

dangerous ponds and pet tortoises.

In the bigger houses strangers come to gawp

at L & L. Often they do not take off their coats. Often they do not

really see through the glass.

The Claphams divinely restored—on show—

are starting to detest the strange word ‘blockbuster’

and the phrase ‘two for one Sunday’.

If they could they would hold hands.