The h2g2 Poem
Created | Updated Mar 19, 2003
Send in the Clowns
If we could choose, we should put the clowns in charge of the circus.
They're like the rest of us: tripping over their big feet,
dressed in unfashionable clothes, perpetual victims of bad hair days,
always just one step away from chaos and calamity.
You know where you stand with a clown. His sad eyes
and painted-on smile tell you life is as dicey as you think it is.
We're all punchlines to a great cosmic joke:
Toot your horn and get on with it.
A clown does not ponder imponderables.
The ineffable remains un-effed. He makes no speeches,
rouses no rabbles nor treads on the downtrodden.
He won't corrupt your children, or make off with your wife.
While he's in charge, the lions stay locked in their cages,
nobody falls from the trapeze, nobody leaps through fire.
He debates his politics with squirting flowers
and fights his wars with custard pies in the face.
No one erects a statue in his honor.
No one dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Clown.
When he's finished for the night,
we can all go home and sleep safely our beds.
