Flush With Desire to Help Save Water

Rich Tosches’ article (“Yet Another No-No for the Socially Correct: Flushing,” July 21) prompts me to send you a poem written for a “socially correct” lady who had many guests coming for a luncheon. She was in despair about how to break the news gracefully, having just received a stern letter from the water department about her consumption, so I sent her the following, which she posted on the powder room door with excellent results (she thinks):

Victorian ladies! Such modesty!

(Appalled by prurient capers,

Should subject carnal raise its head)

Would capsize with the vapors.

All tremulousness and quivering,

They’d gasp and sigh and blush,

And slowly swoon into the ground,

Suffused with faintest flush.

We drought-doomed moderns, pity us!

So helpless in Time’s thrall:

We do not faint, we do not blush,

WE MAY NOT FLUSH AT ALL!

MARJORIE L. FASMAN

Beverly Hills