Laughter Divine [r] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

And so came the message from our Sunshine Abbess:
the Nazi High Command of our little cloister orders we
are to observe silence at all times, no talking in cubicles,
over cupboards or dividers - this is a religious institution
where the Holy Grail of Language Purity is worshipped
and we shall spend the day on our knees - pleading for
absolution and exoneration for the years we attended
to foreign gods of strange countries, as of now

Only the Queen's English and the old Dutchmen's home-
brewed Afrikaans will be allowed to exist in this hallowed
institution, anybody caught talking will be lynched on the
spot, our Nazi dictator boss Mme La Pompadour, a most
terrible scourge - cannot stand the noise she hears upon
opening the throne room in which she presides (when she
bothers to come to work which isn't very often) and we be-
have like children in the trenches, running around

Talking about our lives, a cardinal sin, we're supposed to
whisper about language matters only, quietly digging the
bureaucratic and administrative trenches, making endless
term lists to please Her Highness La Pompadour, -directly
related to Spanish Inquisition's Tomás de Torquemada -
who would have burned us at the stake as evil witches a
long time ago if her Nazi inclinations did not force her to
torture us alive in the open-plan-office trenches

Studying the message of oppression signed in blood under
duress, I noticed a loophole - no prohibition against singing,
how marvellous, I went to my friend singing snatches from
The Sound of Music and in the stairwell a favourite German
Wiegenlied Schlafe mein Prinzchen shlaf ein, es ruhn Schäf-
chen und Vögelein; the wonder of sweet sound and dream
so overwhelming it lifted me up from this Nazi earth and I
floated above on cloud nine, still singing Schlafe

Mein Prinzchen shlaf ein - and I realised to err is human and
to forgive divine, with laughter divine I toasted Madame De La
Torquemada - the little alien dreaming of being ein Prinzchen
schon in dem Himmel…