"Огден Нэш. Видеть - значит верить (Иронические произведения для взрослых и детей) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Огден Нэш. Видеть - значит верить


(США)
Ogden Nash
SEEING EYE TO EYE IS BELIEVING

Иронические произведения для взрослых и детей
"Община" МОСКВА 1992
Перевод и состав А.Н. Жукова

A FRIEND IN NEED WILL BE AROUND IN FIVE
MINUTES
What are friends?
Why, they are people for love of whom one goes out and
eagerly borrows what one to them eagerly lends,
Who in return assure one that if one were about to be
eaten by an octopus they would dive fathoms deep
to the rescue at the risk of contracting the bends,
But who, if one faces any more prosaic emergency such as
asking if they would mind one's bringing along an
extra girl, one is making a mistake if one on them depends.
They are people on whose entertainment one's entire income
one hospitably and hebdomadally spends,
And who at one's house eat birthright and at their house
one eats pottage and other odds and ends,
And for whose behavior one is to one's foes constantly
making amends,
Yes, that's what are friends.
What then are foes?
Why they are the least of anybody sensible's woes,
Because if there is one thing that you might of anybody
sensible suppose,
It is that he wouldn't have anything to do with people who
prove to be foes,
Because obviously if one tarries blithely among one's
proven foemen,
Why whom has one to blame but oneself if one receives a
poisoned barb in the small of the back or a poisoned
comment on the large of the abdomen?
Yes, friends are unavoidable and epidemic and therefore
friend trouble is forgivable but I have no sympathy
for him who circles Robin Hood's barn and exposes
Himself to foeses.
I maintain that foes are very nice people as long as a reason-
?able distance separates oneself and them, whereas a
friend in need or in his cups can reach you across mountains
of glass and lakes of fire, with which re?mark I shall now
close,
Simply pausing to add that compared to a friend at the