A Change of Words

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A change of words is what they said,

Something a bit more acceptable,

To modern tastes and sensibilities

We must make it less contemptible.

These books are for children after all,

And our babies can't feel offended,

You surely won't see anything wrong

With texts that are slightly amended.

So without the author's permission, 

Cause for ten years he's been dead,

They took out their magnifying glasses

And scoured the pages they read.

Like uniformed men armed with rulers,

Taking measure of our heads,

They inspected every sentence

For the meaning of what is being said.

Aha! the word 'fat', it has to go,

And 'crazy' cannot be tolerated,

'Mothers and fathers' replaced by 'parents'

And 'ugly' is synonymous with 'hated'.

The list they compiled was comprehensive,

With many substitutions,

The result were stories dull enough 

To erase any moral confusion.

And by 'moral' what they actually meant,

Are groups that needed placation,

Until the books bore scant resemblance 

To the author's initial creation.

What makes this episode most ironic,

That the revisers don't seem to get,

Is the author was a well-known satirist

Whose stories are meant to upset. 

And thank goodness we have stories that upset.