Misalliance Flanders/Swann ©1957 Mechanical Copyright Protection Soc.

The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun

And many other creepers do the same

But some climb anticlockwise; the bindweed does, for one

Or Convulvulus, to give its proper name

 

Rooted on either side of the door, one of each species grew

And raced towards the window ledge above

Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew

Where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love

 

Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed

“Oh! Let us get married if my parents don't mind. We’d

Be loving and inseparable, inexplicably entwined. We'd

Live happily ever after,” said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.

 

To the honeysuckle's parents it came as a shock

“The bindweed,” they said, “are inferior stock

They're uncultivated, of breeding bereft

We twine to the right and they twine to the left”

 

Said the anticlockwise bindweed to the clockwise honeysuckle

“We’d better start saving—many a mickle mak's a muckle—

Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck'll

Take a turn for the better,” said the bindweed to the honeysuckle

 

A bee who was passing remarked to them then

“I've said it before and I'll say it again

Consider your offshoot, if offshoots there be

They'll never receive any blessings from me”

 

Poor little sucker! How will it learn

When it's climbing which way to turn?

Right? Left? What a disgrace!

Or it may go straight upwards and fall flat on its face

 

Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed

“It seems that against us all fate has combined

Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling, Oh, my darling Columbine

Thou art lost and gone forever. We shall never entwine."

 

Together they found them the very next day

They had pulled up their roots and just shriveled away

Deprived of the freedom for which we must fight

To veer to the left, or to veer to the right