Terza rima

Two brothers lived in a city so fair
That no one who visited felt alone
Or threw to the wind their hope or their care,

So fair this city. To me it's unknown,
For I heard this tale second-hand, the name
Of this fair place, so let's call it Atone.

As I'm inventing, let's spice up the game
And say this city was not as it seems;
Say this city was fair only in name.

Perhaps in Atone the gold tower gleams
With the blood of the martyrs and rebels;
Is it gallows making use of the beams

And the stone of archways? Are prison cells
Stuffed so full that the bars brand the convicts,
The floors filthy, in the air wretched smells?

I leave it to you what this tale depicts;
I should tell only what things I have heard
About brothers, about family conflicts.

Each brother knew of the other no word,
Raised by different families of different class.
They shared one father; his title conferred

On one son, but not the son of the lass
He sought when he went to the bordello;
For, in truth, he was an unfaithful ass.

The lady, his wife, did certainly know,
But for a tale of brothers, let suffice
That one was born high, the other born low.

The father was Nimrod, a man of vice,
Who pranced throughout Atone in dainty dress
With bells and jewels intended to entice

Any unwary blossoming young Miss.
When Nimrod had pranced his fill he would sit
On a brick wall, and feign the greatest bliss.

Lucky for the reader, chance would have it
A picture of the pandering father
In his oft found pose I can now submit.


You must now wonder, why should I bother
To tell a story of such an egghead
As Nimrod? Well, it's only another

Step on the path of the story you tread,
And you know it soon will lead to a fall,
To his breaking. Then enough will be said.

His wife home pregnant, from pubs he would crawl
To the night-town district in broad daylight,
This foolish Nimrod had no wherewithal.

He drunkenly followed where lust invite,
He fell up the stairs and into the room
Of his mistress, who worked hard to excite

Masquerading manhood from his costume.
Then she squat down and loosened her girdle;
She put in his face her bosom perfumed

With lavender and sweet smelling myrtle.
She writhed and rolled all around his fat gut;
He sprang up -- then her womb which was fertile

Accepted the seed. Then that lousy mutt
Staggered and wobbled towards his abode;
All his clothes inside out, and still half cut;

He made of a doorway his own commode.
The citizens of Atone jeered at him,
"What depravity! What of honor code?"

Then some had their fill, right up to the brim
When he told them to mind their damn business;
Some swore they would tear him down, limb from limb;

But perhaps their hate and jeering dismiss
Nimrod not for his infidelity,
But for his part in their oppression. His

Job for the tower of absurdity
Repossessing the homes of the down-trod
Made him apt to their animosity.

He finally was home, spared from the hot rod,
And was told a rebellion had begun.
He shuttered and bolted his doors -- asked god

To protect him till the violence was done.
And so it was, thought not through divine grace,
Nimrod lived to see the birth of one son

By his wife, one by his mistress. In case
You are worried that this fool got a pass,
I tell you, no, for him was saved a space

Beneath a high brick wall from which, alas,
He was pushed and crashed, in the end to succumb
To gravity. But before he was cast

Named his sons Twiddledee and Twiddledum.