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| Tiddely quiddely Edward M. Kennedy Quite unaccountably Drove in a stream. Pleas of amnesia Incomprehensible Possibly shattered Political dream. |
There's nothing funny about this one but it was exceptionally clever.
In poetry a dactyl is a measure of foot comprising a strong syllable, followed by two unaccented beats. (It's just like the "D" in Morse code.) It's most unusual to find double dactyls used and this clever political satire written by Leonard Miall makes good use of them.
For those readers who weren't around at the time, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off the Dike Bridge at Chappaquiddick in 1969. He escaped from the car but left his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die. Many questions were left unanswered or, perhaps with the Kennedy money behind him, they were never asked.
The resulting cover-up and scandal created as many rumours as the murder of his brother, President John Kennedy. As Leonard Miall suggested in the verse, it ended his political career.