Young’uns
“Pah! You young’uns do everythin’ right,” said the Irish farmer.
The offer of a cigarette declined.
More moral now, or so it seems to me, than ever we were.
“You seem to me so lethal new-fashioned.”
Grandson, seventeen, said my paintings were “inappropriate” -
Sorry was I to see hard work so spurn’d.
Do young’uns do everything so right? What they get from their mates.
But, heed, and we’ll see that the wheel will turn.
The kindly Irish farmer knew something about good manners.
The cost to young’uns of a cigarette
Would seem less than the spurned kind-heart of a friendly old farmer,
Who, in wise good humour, bore no regret.
© RM Meyer
Highlands, April/May 2022
(completed Cornwall August 2022)