The Reading Club.
Calmly at ease and settled, Mrs. Throp sits with her knitting.
An ornamental oriental spinning top,
a hanging parchment with an incandescent heart, casts her
almost in marble silhouette.
Her careful fingers working by themselves apart,
she captures to a comfortable degree, that amiable stupor
natural to a lack of wit.
The ladies are preparing to digest
the heart of Irish literature, but stop at its periphery
the skin being tough, and pause in their uncharted quest
upon the Irish Sea for cups of tea,
and some assorted biscuits for a sop to hollowness.
And guilefully, Mrs. Throp,
who has not read the assignment, says
that she wonders if so much Irish history is after all
the best that they can do, and suggests a popular biography.
She looks for their approval with a smile,
and sighting rescue from that ambivalent isle, the marooned
but valiant ladies all agree.
[LAUGHTER]