Belatedly . . .

.

I was digging through one of the myriad mounds of paper in my office just now and I came across a scribbled piece of light verse -- all right, all right! doggerel -- which I'd penned in praise of (the quite brilliant) A Child's Garden of Grammar and then . . . well, dropped into the dread Pile.  Abandoned to the fickle currents of fate.  Which have just tossed it up again upon our distant and sterile shore.

I'd have posted this when the Great Man died, had I been able to find it.  Nevertheless, here it is:

en homage

To explicate grammar well

In verse, one must be smart as hell, 

Lucid, slippery as a fish,

More witty than mere words can tell --

In short, one must be Thomas Disch.

Rest in peace, Tom.  I only met you three or four times, and I'm not at all sure you were ever able to distinguish me from Adam.  But I am one of your very many distant and devoted friends.

*