When I welsh on my rabbit he goes spare
attacks my ginger beer and ginger hair
with any simple tool that comes to hand.
There are so many. One that he finds grand,
the celt, a common prehistoric tool
I had to throw away before the fool,
flat hat on backwards, hatter shades or worse,
had used the celt to chisel me, the hearse
drawn up and weighing on his mortal soul
and wanting mine and perhaps the whole
of what I want continued for a bit.
There’s something else my rabbit likes: a brit,
the young of herring and related fish
from the Welsh word ‘brithyll’ and a tasty dish
for Anglophobes and Anglophiles and Phil,
my rabbit’s name. Sometimes I call him Bill
but that’s Dutch courage. When Phil drinks he’ll bore
the heart out of a haggis with his store
of hoppy tales; the one of the Scotch egg
is crumby, and his rare bit re the leg
of the dog that bit him is one I can’t watch
and he has others I attempt to scotch.
A hare is what is wanted here I know
now Phil’s rabbiting about his new Dutch hoe.
I’ll get my Irish up or else he’ll bring
in, ecumenically, the Rabbi Ting.