COUNSELOR: Poetry Crisis Line, what is your emergency?
CALLER: As I was going to St Ives
COUNSELOR: This sounds familiar.
CALLER: I met a man with seven wives
COUNSELOR: And you want to know how many cats they had in their forty-nine sacks?
CALLER: Said he, ‘I think it’s much more fun / Than getting stuck with only one.’
COUNSELOR: But more work too, I’d imagine.
CALLER: . . .
COUNSELOR: I mean, emotional labor. With eight people, the housework must go swimmingly.
CALLER: . . .
COUNSELOR: Uh. . . except for cleaning up after three hundred and forty-three cats.
Click here to read “St. Ives” and other poems by Roald Dahl.