“Cremation Speech” by Brutus

Students! Faculty!! Country Men !!!
Don’t lend me your contributions.
I come here to bury Efflux,
Not to praise it.

The evil that women do,
Lives in the memory.
The good is often interred
Along with their past issue(s).

So let it be with Efflux.
The noble committee hath told you
That the issue was too ambitious
As it was so, it was a grievous showoff.
And graciously have I answered it,
By calling the whole thing off.

Here I come to speak at Efflux’s funeral
Not for its praise
Monika is my faculty
Faithful and just to IBS
But the committee says the issue was too ambitious
And the committee is so obedient and gracious.

I come here not to reverse what Monika screwed up.
Here I am to speak on what I do know,
That you all loved Efflux,
Now all packed up.

What cause, I ask you, makes you mourn for Efflux?
Is it art? Culture? Vibrancy?
Forget it, these are bourgeois ideas
Long forgotten,
Since my term’s infancy.

Bear with me;
my head is in debris here
Together with Efflux
And I must pause
till it comes back to me.

Just yesterday,
the Efflux might have come out of Press
It now lies abandoned,
for it might have transgressed
all normal limits and done great harm
to all, including me.
It would have disadvantaged impressionable minds
And done the great committee wrong,
Which is, as you know,
Honourable and strong.

If you had any hopes,
Prepare to shed them now.
Remember how my face flushed with red
When the first issue came on show?
With it, Monika had so unkindly knock’d
At the doors of HO.

Ingratitude,
more strong than a traitor’s arms
Quite angered me
and burst all my plans.
And this 5 year special issue
Was the unkindest stab
of all. She was trying to grab
a piece of sunlight while
my position was drab?

How can that be,
Don’t you get it?
The leader’s position is always marked by greatness
Whether true or false
And let IBS be swept over by bloody
Backwardness.
(with apologies to Mark Antony and Julius Caesar)