The Pillar Box

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)



The pillar box is fat and red,
The pillar box is high;
It has the flattest sort of head
And not a nose or eye,
But just one open n*gger mouth
That grins when I go by.

The pillar box is very round
But hungry all the day;
Although it doesn't make a sound,
Folks know it wants to say,
"Give me some letter sandwiches
To pass the time away."

"A postage stamp I like to eat
Or gummy letterette."
I see the people on the street,
If it is fine or wet,
Give something to the greedy thing;
They never quite forget.

The pillar box is quite a friend;
When Father goes away
My Mother has such lots to send,
Far letters every day,
And so I drop them in its mouth
When I go out to play.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 12, 2023

42 sec read
118

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCB DEDEXE FAFGXG HEHECE
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 657
Words 143
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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