Omnibossity

When I was a schoolboy in the Great Karoo of yore,

Not knowing who’d said it, or caring what it meant,

But liking its stab of Late Victorian oratory,

We hurled Disraeli’s jibe at Gladstone,

A rhetorician, Dizzy'd mocked, “inebriated

With the exuberance of his verbosity,”

At any boy who chose to talk too much,

“Verbosity” mutated in our teasing mouths

Into “amnibossity” or “omnibossity.”

Language, though, has the hidden power

Of unadorning untold truth:

"Omnibossity” was law under apartheid,

The master motto of the ruling state.

“They also rule who only stand in wait!”

That mascot's my own concoction,

Shorting the knockout pet of youth,

But may undoubtedly endower

Much that's been said and done of late.

Friday, October 30, 2026