One might attribute this to some great man—
or woman—feasting in the fuscous past.
(The adjective means "brownish gray," dulling
senses to recede.) With whilom days now all
tricked out, we strain in dismal shades of that
to see through an obscuring cataract.
There are no great men or women today.
Were there, our contemporaries' display
and unctuous insights would quickly convey
it. The insalubrious gloom of fact
and painful findings should at least appall.
Deduced such crass origins—no syllabub,
bright with thick cream, but dreary Llareggub
—greatness itself's now limned in fuscous gray.
Cover image from the eleventh-century Bayeux Tapestry.
A syllabub is an old British dessert made by curdling cream with wine, liquor, or citrus fruit.
Dylan Thomas invented a Welsh village called Llareggub— "buggerall" spelled backwards—in his 1954 radio play Under Milk Wood.