Mon père is a peripatetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea.
With a purposeful heart Pap advances his cart
With a purposeful heart Pap advances his cart
through each street, bleating, “Take it from me:
I’ll supply you with hairpins 'n' buttons 'n' combs;
I’ll supply you with hairpins 'n' buttons 'n' combs;
I’ll provide you with scissors 'n' knives;
I’ll equip you with wares to embellish your homes
I’ll equip you with wares to embellish your homes
and to brighten your otherwise lives."
Ma mère...? She's a chary, heretical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea
who's decided God's dead, that we've all been misled,
but by Truth we'll, en fin, be set free.
She'll supply you with manuals, pamphlets 'n' tracts;
she'll provide you with trenchant accounts;
she'll equip you with books to embellish the facts
from her fav'rite sophistical founts.
Mon frère is a square arithmetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea,
one who vends from a box arm'd with jimmy-proof locks
(a magician friend vanish'd the key).
He'll supply you with numerals, zeros 'n' fractions,
provide you with pluses 'n' minuses;
he'll equip you with functions allowing transactions
more knotty than Thomas Aquinas's.
Ma soeur is a purely genetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea,
one who mongers her wares via markets 'n' fairs.
Former student of Mendel is she.
She'll supply you with molecules, proteins 'n' genes;
she'll provide you with DNA chains;
she'll equip you with diploids (whatever that means)
and her crib notes from sim'lar domains.
Her brother's another prophetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea,
he whose cart, as a rule, had been lugg'd by a mule,
but is now borne about by a bee.
He'll supply Tarot cards 'n' small lot-casting shards;
he'll provide you with crystalline globes;
he'll equip you with rods for determining odds
and those 8-Balls that expedite probes.
My niece...? An obese hypothetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea.
As her stock's very small, she needs no cart as all.
There's some merch the girl offers for free.
She'll supply you with theorems, axioms, rules;
She'll provide you with postulates new.
She'll equip you with schema as well. Only fools
are not ready for bed when she's through.
Ma tante is a haunted poetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea
who recites with a trill and who writes with a quill
and exists, in a word, sans-souci.
She'll supply you with verses in meters 'n' rhymes;
she'll provide you with sonnets 'n' ballads;
She'll equip you with po'sy from long-bygone times --
and her random rhetorical salads...
...whereas I'm but a shy alphabetical peddler
from Saint-Semiosis-sur-Sea
bearing wares in a rack that I tote on my back
which allows me, while peddling, to pee.
I'll supply you with Ws, Xs 'n' Zs;
I'll provide you with ashes 'n' wyns;
I'll equip you with lambdas 'n' thetas 'n' psis --
plus a futhark or two, for my sins.
