As presented to our publisher by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor, with these clear instructions:
Poetry Sundae. 9.02.2014  The punctuation in Nash’s shaving/bathing poem is as it is laid out in my copy of  his work from 1972. I tell you this simply to avoid the possibility of you thinking that I had disappeared completely round the twist.
Elias Dumpleton-Tewkes

IRA MAINE

AND THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX IN A LEAP YEAR.

A poem by Ogden Nash (1902-1971) the American writer of achingly amusing verse.

Some people shave before bathing.

And about people who bathe before shaving they are scathing,

While those who bathe before shaving,

Well, they imply that those who shave before bathing are misbehaving.

Suppose you shave before bathing, well the advantage is that you

don’t have to make a special job of washing the lather off

afterwards, it just floats off with the rest of your accumula-

tions in the tub,

But the disadvantage is that before bathing your skin is hard and

dry and your beard confronts the razor like a grizzly bear

defending its cub.

Well then, suppose you bathe before shaving, well the advantage

is that after bathing your skin is soft and moist, and your

beard positively begs for the blade,

But the disadvantage is that to get the lather off you have to wash

your face all over again at the basin almost immediately after

washing it in the tub, which is a duplication of effort that

leaves me spotless but dismayed.

The referee reports, gentlemen, that Fate has loaded the dice,

Since your only choice is between walking around all day with a

sore chin or washing your face twice.

[END.]

Ogden Nash, as you can see, concerns himself with the great decisions that men are faced with every day of their lives; the advantages of procrastination, particularly with regard to household chores, the prepoceros  rhinoceros, children’s partys and the disadvantages of kids in batches, being in the dog house, and, from his home in America, Mr Nash offers this advice regarding  a particular Australian marsupial;

THE WOMBAT

The wombat lives across the seas,

Among the far Antipodes.

He may exist on nuts and berries,

Or then again, on missionaries;

His distant habitat precludes

Conclusive knowledge of his moods.

But I would not engage the wombat

In any form of mortal combat.

[END]

Where would we be, I ask you, without this profoundly significant intellectual insights?

Personally, it leaves me breathless.

Nash grew up in that glorious era of the New Yorker, the Algonquin Hotel, Dorothy Parker, Dashiell Hammett and the Round Table, with Thurber, Woollcott and Benchley attending. This was the period when Parker wrote, with the most astonishing subtlety;

But now I know the things I know’

And do the things I do;

And if you do not like me so,

To hell, my love, with you!

[END]

We shall hear more of the Round Table anon.