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The Tragedy of the p and the q

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Lovers in eternity

The p and q were two eternal lovers
Who faced each other in the alphabet.
To all else lost, oblivious of others,
The ideal Romeo and Juliet.

But though united in their gaze forever
Yet in the world of words they could not meet.
And thus was love denied that fleshly pleasure
Without which is it ever incomplete.

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How the p became the b

But hear what happened to the godlike p
Whose beauty once had brought him love and fame.
His needs unmet, the p became the b:
A change so ill it covered him with shame!

One morning he awoke to find a belly
Where previously he’d had a bulging chest.
His mighty pecs had turned to flaccid jelly
And heartless gravity had done the rest.

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How the b became the h

The perfect p was now the brutish b
But that was not the end of all this woe.
For every letter has a destiny
And fate was poised to strike a further blow.

The order of the letters quickly changed
And into outer darkness b was hurled!
And from the q eternally estranged,
The bottom fell forever from his world.

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Epilogue

But what had happened to the q, you’re asking,
With all these transformations taking place?
The aftermath here, too, would prove as lasting
And change forever this unhappy race.

The wretched creature fractured into parts
Unable to endure such weight of woe.
And never tale would wring the letters’ hearts
As how the q became the l and o.

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Paul Martin Freeman is an art dealer in London. This poem is from his recent book, A Chocolate Box Menagerie, published by New English Review Press.

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The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.


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17 Responses

  1. Joseph S. Salemi

    Ha! A brilliant fun piece of work, with imaginative and unexpected turns. A true fictive artifact, of the sort that is utterly absent from mainstream work these days.

    What links all these lower-case letters is that they have ascenders and descenders, unlike the older capital forms.

    Reply
  2. Jonathan Kinsman

    Loved it! And as a toiler in the vineyards of our Lord (8th grade public school), I would be honored if I may make use of this, with full attribution of course. For payment I can only offer another lead for your wit to explicate. Something I have been unable to solve.

    Was 6’s fear that 7 8 9 unfounded?

    Great entertainment and wit! Thank you Paul for brightening our soggy California day!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      You teach in a California public school? I’m from California; you have all my sympathy. My cousin does the same thing for a living; a student recently hit her, and by law, there was nothing she or anyone else at the school could do for punishment.

      If you go through the powers of 2, you see that 4 8 16. In the Fibonacci sequence, 5 8 13. The numbers have a lot to fear from each other!

      Reply
    • Paul Martin Freeman

      Fine by me, but if you’re going to reproduce the poems you may need the publisher’s permission.

      Glad you liked them.

      Reply
  4. Norma Pain

    These four short poems are so much fun Paul. An amazing idea, (wish I’d thought of it!). The rhyme and meter are perfect and now I must go back and read them all a few more times. Maybe your brilliance will rub off. Thank you for the giggles.

    Reply
    • Paul Martin Freeman

      I’m glad you like the poems, Norma, but I think I must have got something wrong. I thought I was writing a tragedy! Clearly, I’m not that brilliant!

      Reply
  5. C.B. Anderson

    You might not believe, Paul, how often I think about such things. I should have majored in linguistics. Words and letters have an evolution better founded than evolution of the biological kind, to be sure, and alphabetic order is a miracle of the first water — it’s a diamond we beheld and learned by rote at the earliest stages of our education, as ineffaceable as one, two, three.

    Reply
  6. Julian D. Woodruff

    Very clever, Paul. I especially like your take on the bottoming out of proud “p.” And you do everything without needing pictures. I notice, having done an illustrated poetic alphabet along similar lines for kids some years ago. If you’ve got the time and interest, you could do the whole alphabet, too, quite entertainingly.

    Reply
    • Paul Martin Freeman

      Hello Julian. If Evan will indulge me there are more letters to come.

      Reply
  8. Joshua C. Frank

    Love it! It has all the fun and educational value that’s missing from a lot of children’s books these days. I know I would have loved it back then too. Like Julian said, it doesn’t even need pictures!

    If p became b, why didn’t q become d? I guess the moral is that we all have to mind our p’s and q’s…

    Reply

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