Pansies (Lawrence)/The Oxford Voice

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THE OXFORD VOICE
When you hear it languishing
and booing and cooing and sidling through the front teeth,
     the oxford voice
      or worse still
    the would-be oxford voice
you don't even laugh any more, you can't.

For every blooming bird is an oxford cuckoo nowadays,
you can't sit on a bus nor in the tube
but it breathes gently and languishingly in the back of your neck.

And oh, so seductively superior, so seductively
     self-effacingly
     deprecatingly
      superior.—
We wouldn't insist on it for a moment
     but we are
      we are
    you admit we are
      superior.—

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