# Ballade Against Cheesemongery

Author: Rob MacWolf
Tags: Ballade, Cheese, Poetry

#29 of poetry

One of the things I love about the Ballade, as a form, is that it's equally adaptable to jokes as to serious poetry.

The grocer's, for $6.95 per pound  
Harvarti sells, in blocks of creamy beige  
Bespeckled with unthinkables (well ground  
Or crushed) like nuts, or wine, or sage  
And rosemary. At this I briefly rage  
Then pass it o'er for cheap varieties  
My unsophistic hungers to assuage.  
I do desire no vanity in cheese.

I go, and madness does not fall behind:  
In tubs on frigid shelves they sell a paste  
Flavored with cherries, or with garlic rind,  
Or bacon. And withal there goes to waste  
The sweetest cream that e'er Galthea placed  
Between pastoral palms of devotees  
In Arcady, whose name is here disgraced,  
And did desire no vanity in cheese.

And lo! What woe behold I though I rail  
Against whatever fiend devised this thing  
Called Pepperjack, to make the righteous quail  
With wax to mock and capsicum to sting!  
My muse fails, and I can no longer sing  
Upon this sacrilege! The poet flees.  
(He snatches Mozzeralla on the wing,  
For he desires no vanity in cheese.)

Prince, you sent me pepper-corned Edam  
With citron-oil essence. Remove it please:  
Its power to sour my gut, your soul to damn!  
I do desire no vanity in cheese.

Source: https://sofurry.com/s/dmW0zEnb
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