FROM OUR DEPARTMENT OF SHOWING-OFF: A SESTINA

It may have escaped the attention of even More Intelligent Life's most eagle-eyed readers that Economist.com, our sister site, daily publishes a short briefing produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit--yet another sister. For example: "The tiger tamed: Ireland's economy faces three years of declining output". These briefings are often interesting, always true and rarely artsy.

When the duty to announce each day's publication of a new EIU briefing falls on one Josie Delap, Economist.com's editor of Country Briefings, she makes the most of this apparently dry work. (A lover of the desert, Josie is an accomplished Arabist and traveller across arid lands.) Patient, curious and some say brilliant, she is also a budding poet who specialises in making do with what she finds, often marking the arrival of the latest EIUism with a rhyming couplet or, on a good day, a sonnet. It was an exceptional day in this office when, posed with a challenge, Josie undertook to bring us the news in the form of a sestina. Behold:

An Economistina

I sit shivering at my desk today
Wondering what The Economist
Wants me to publish,
What searing piece of intelligence,
What distilled unit
Of insight will be next to tantalise.

Will South Africa’s troubles tantalise
The editors today
As they ponder over which unit
Of Economist content, all comparable
In their appeal to the intelligence
Of our readers, to publish?

Some might ask how important it is to publish
The EIU’s snippets of analysis. Though the witty headlines may tantalise,
Do people really absorb the value of the intelligence
Offered therein? Do they awaken and think “Today
I must turn to The Economist
Website and, without imbibing a single unit

Of alcohol, no, not one solitary unit,
Investigate what they have chosen to publish
From the EIU”? Is this their heart’s desire from The Economist?
Or do they require more titillating morsels to tantalise
Their tastebuds? Given the choice today,
Would you choose a sexy burlesque audio or massage the ego of your intelligence

With something a little drier? Surely the mark of true intelligence
Would be to select the unit
Of journalistic wisdom tendered today
With which, in selecting to publish,
The powers that be have managed to tantalise
All the senses of the discerning Economist

Reader? Still, upon occasion, the contributions from the Economist
Intelligence Unit do call out to the depths of our intelligence.
Managing to tantalise
With the possibility of a unit
Of knowledge gained, proudly to publish
From our lips at the dinner party scheduled for today.