I Know You Will Be Happy here

Fairy Tale
Ron Padgett

The little elf is dressed in a floppy cap
and he has a big rosy nose and flaring white eyebrows
with short legs and a jaunty step, though sometimes
he glides across an invisible pond with a bonfire glow on his cheeks:
it is northern Europe in the nineteenth century and people
are strolling around Copenhagen in the late afternoon,
mostly townspeople on their way somewhere,
perhaps to an early collation of smoked fish, rye bread, and cheese,
washed down with a dark beer: ha ha, I have eaten this excellent meal
and now I will smoke a little bit and sit back and stare down
at the golden gleam of my watch fob against the coarse dark wool of my vest,
and I will smile with a hideous contentment, because I am an evil man,
and tonight I will do something evil in this city!

This is definitely one of my all-time favorite poems, almost entirely because of the unexpected and altogether delicious ending. The last two lines really make it. I often think of them when I’m out and about, even though I am technically an evil woman with no gleaming watch fob to speak of.

Read more about the poet here or hear him reading ‘Fairy Tale’ here.

Another evil man who likes doing evil.