When I started this “blog” I never thought I’d end up recommending a poem in The New Yorker. Have I gone fey? Do I now care that, after encountering a dead hedgehog, some middle-aged academic has set to contemplating eternity? Not a bit of it. Here’s is the superb verse from this fortnight’s edition in its entirety:

ON THE INEVITABLE DECLINE INTO MEDIOCRITY OF THE POPULAR MUSICIAN WHO ATTAINS A COMFORTABLE MIDDLE AGE

by David Musgrave

O Sting, where is thy death?

Good. Isn’t it?