The Oxford Voice

by D.H. Lawrence

 

When you hear it languishing

and hooing and cooing, and sidling through the front teeth,

the Oxford voice

or worse still

the would-be Oxford voice

you don’t even laugh any more, you can’t.

 

For every blooming bird is an Oxford cuckoo nowadays,

you can’t sit on a bus nor in the tube

but it breathes gently and languishingly in the back of

your neck.

 

And oh, so seductively superior, so seductively

self-effacingly

deprecatingly

superior.

We wouldn’t insist on it for a moment

but we are

we are

you admit we are

superior.

 

 

2 thoughts on “The Oxford Voice

  1. Pingback: Confused of Sussex | K.M.Lockwood

  2. So true . Right now our little North Yorkshire village is infested with their voices ,large cars and, huge dogs + the voice owners converting shacks into bijou residences .we’re just going to ground in a big way -HELP SAVE US PLEASENT PEASANTS
    JUDY OATES

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