The anonymous author of this short poem adroitly imagines one of the embarrassing situations that can arise when one has taken rather too much and provides an amusing punchline.
It was an evening in November,
Anonymous
As I very well remember,
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride
Poem 179. The Pig
It was an evening in November,
As I very well remember,
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,
But my knees were all a-flutter,
And I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.
Yes, I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter,
When a colleen passing by did softly say
‘You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses’—
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
I like this poem because of the punch line at the end—we are expecting the drunk to be suitably embarrassed by the girl’s comment, but it is the pig that is shamed into moving away from the drunk. The setup for the last line is beautifully done too, we can easily imagine the man lying in the street and the pig joining him in the gutter.
There are various versions of this poem online: the only difference in them is the month at the start of the poem. The version above is the one that I first encountered, but there are others that are set in May and September.