The tissue box still nearly new
With sheets all neatly stacked and true,
Each tissue drags its neighbors through
In tightly mangled wads, askew.
But when the box is almost finished,
The tissue tally much diminished,
The weightless box then swings and dangles
From tissues drawn at non-right angles.
The interval is rather brief
When tissue boxes cause no grief.
This underscores in sharp relief
The wisdom of that leitmotif
Of elegance in O. Sharif
And O. Wilde’s Algernon Moncrieff.
I mean, of course, the handkerchief.