NOAH should have left to drown
Or most rigidly alone
All the microbes of disease,
To wit, the one that makes you sneeze
And that of dental caries;
But old Noah did not bungle
With his inmates of the jungle;
Did not have to give them physic,
For the Lord had made them seasick:
So, instead of roar and riot,
Everything was rather quiet.
Thus the sympathetic cat
Vomited beside the rat;
And the lion at the lamb
Jerked a friendly diaphragm;
For the lion, far offshore,
Could not be a carnivore;
And the lamb, while the Ark wallowed,
Did not care if he were swallowed.
(’Twas the equinox of autumn,
And the Ark had a flat bottom)
So peace reigned instead of ructions
In spite of close-up introductions.
Noah had to make excuses
To the two hippopotamuses
When they bellowed, “As for us
We are both amphibious,
And a gambol in your Flood
Cannot help but do us good.
So we want to disembark
From your desiccated Ark.”
Noah answered softly, “Whist!
Do you want to make her list?
All the earth is swallowed up
There is nothing left to crop,
And the gathering miasma
Is enough to give you asthma.”
Then he touched each orbèd buttock
With his presentation boat hook,
And he said, “Until we’re harbored,
You will stay to port and starboard
Just to stabilize the boat.”
This is where we end the quote.
Next he shouted, “That will do!”
To the sprightly kangaroo.
“Must I always tell you, ‘Stop it!
Find some other place to hop it’?
Looping through the Giant Sloth
Shows how foolish you are both.”
Then he put a whorlèd snail
At the junction of her tail
Just to inculcate the notion
That there s something in slow motion.
While all this was going on,
The Queen bee murmured to the drone,
“Though you ve got me where you wanted,
Don’t you take too much for granted.
I had lovers once in swarms
Mad to take me in their arms,
Thousands who would call me ‘Honey.*
Here I think it far from funny
That from them I should be thus banned
With a fraction of a husband.”
All the drone could say was, “Hum.”
While the Queen said, “Bumble, bum!”
“Land ahoy?” asked Noah. “Nope!”
Said the dappled periscope
“Noah used, for the giraffe
(Making the hyena laugh)
Was his lookout since no necking
Was allowed between the decking.
“Never,”said he, “have my orbits
Seen so many floating carpets.”
Noah yelled, “Hurray, hurrah!
We are off Armenia.
And that loud ‘rat-tat-a-tat’
Means we’re stuck on Ararat.” Then, on summits snows had blanched,
Beached a barque was never launched.
Oh, the joy and the elation
Of the Great Disembarkation!
The enlargement and relief!
They were almost past belief.
Oh, the clawing, pawing, stretching
Of the muscles stiff from retching.
How they looped and rolled and grunted
For their free style had been stunted
So much that the careful Noah,
Like a pole, paid out the Boa.
Joy! They saw before their eyes
The rivers five of Paradise.

Who could tell to them what land meant ?
Suddenly, the Lord’s commandment
To get rid of inhibitions
Brought on by the Ark’s conditions,
And repopulate terrain
Emptied by the recent rain,
Was remembered, and seemed good.
Anyhow, a lively mood
Filled the creatures with a fire
Which the poets call “Desire.”
You could hear the doe moose calling,
And the tigers caterwauling.
While the duck-billed platypus
Laid mammalian eggs for us.
Everywhere the earth was humming,
Everything was so becoming,
“Becoming Childers everywhere :
Pairs repairing off to pair.
Till the universal flame
Caught old Noah who became
Skittish and inclined to sing.
First, he danced a Highland Fling;
Then he sang, “ Let’s have a mirthday,
It is my six-hundredth birthday.
No; it’s my six hundred and first;
And I’m perishing from thirst.”
Then he piped: up came a pipe,
Wine whose grapes were overripe;
But the little fermentation
Added to their delectation*
(* Often yellow effervescence
Has abetted convalescence)
And the pipe escaped bilge waters,
So he shared it with his daughters,
Till the dawn of morning saw
Noah his own son-in-law !