His bony legs spread out
Like the needles of a clock
Telling us it's 2
His hair unkempt, a fest of fleas
His eyes a shade of blue

He knows every corner, every cranny
Where crickets and rats hide themselves
But that bothers him the least
As he has nowhere to go
Nowhere to rush
All he looks forward to
Is a pair of boots to brush.

His toenails as long
As his wrinkled, hanging lobes
And he cuts them off
Once every week
With a tool he calls knife
Having learnt to pronouce it just like us
Rhyming it with life.

He says he's jolly well
Says he gets enough to eat
But I think not
Because I've noticed
His own soles are tattered
I've noticed it as he fixed another's
And he owns not even a tool box
To place his tools which lay scattered.

He has no wife
He has no child
No one to look after
No one who'd look after him
His childhood stories left unsaid
Like a hundred peas in a tin
Having dug deep burrows with time
On his pitty, shrivelled skin.

The tools he treasures
Hammers, brushes, knives and needles
All of which are family heirlooms
Is what he uses to make music
Very much like an enthusiastic toddler
And this raw music is what occupies
The old and weak cobbler.