Getting sidetracked...

From Twenty Years of Uproar another Langford ramble:

...[T]his is by the great David Masson, author of that spiffy (and criminally out-of-print) sf collection The Caltraps of Time. It's called `The Eve of St Affidavit'.

`As I sip the bland cedilla
By my aspic-shaded villa,
Where the salmonella ripens in the sun,
Through the rennet-peopled pines
Wind the simnel-chanting lines
Of the banisters whose longitude is done;
Clad in pelmet, syncope, albumen and lathe, they move as one;
For tonight is Calibration,
Time of terror and elation,
When the calipers commute and our Parenthesis is won.'

(Bar Trek 3, 1977)

I ran across this while looking for any information on a rumored feud between Poul Anderson and Robert Heinlein. I found no such info, but this verse impressed me with its music.

Cheers...