No man on the stair
A. Vine
avine at ENG.SUN.COM
Thu May 13 01:06:47 UTC 1999
Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM wrote:
>
> The estimable Barry's quoted list of 1943 Army slang includes:
> YEHUDI--The little man who cracks you on the back of the head with a mallet.
>
> This brings back, with an exclamation, memories of a fantasy story I must've
> read in the early 60s and remember only dimly. It involved IIRC some sort of
> gizmo that enabled its hero to do things simply by giving an order, such as
> "shut the window", and it would be done with no visible agent. There was some
> reference to the verse
>
> Last night I met upon the stair
> A little man who wasn't there.
> He wasn't there again today.
> Gee, I wish he'd go away.
>
I learned this poem as:
As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh God, I wish he'd go away.
Accompanying the poem was a Magritte-style (or possibly a Magritte) picture of a
blue sky with clouds in the outline of a man (with a bowler hat?) on a
stairwell.
I don't remember where I saw this, though. I think it might have been in a book
called "The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales".
Andrea
--
Andrea Vine
Sun Internet Mail Server i18n architect
avine at eng.sun.com
Remember: stressed is desserts spelled backwards.
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