Poem about a joker with disorganized attire

Question

(Throughout this question, by 'English' I only mean the 'language English'.)

I remember from my childhood an English-language poem from a middle/high school general English textbook (India).

I can only recollect following information about that poem:

• Language - English
• Genre - Comedy or little childish
• I read it in an old general English textbook of middle/high school (India) around 10-12 years ago.
• The poem is about a joker (I'm not sure if he's really a joker or just a man being funny) with disorganized attire
• That man is was wearing a cooking pan as hat
• He was wearing (probably) socks as gloves
• He was travelling in a train or tram and left his station behind. (When he asks someone which station the train had reached he got shocked to hear the name of the station as he left his station behind.)

I guess this poem must be at least 2-3 decades old (or more) (since it mentions train / tram it must belong to 19th or 20th century).

Please tell me name of the poem or poet if anyone remembers such poem.

Answer 1

Your recollections match very well (I would say, precisely) a pretty famous Russian poem by Samuil Marshak, Рассеянный с улицы Бассейной, written in 1930. I found quite a number of English translations in Internet, but they all seem to be fairly recent and amateurish, so I cannot point the version you have read.

The best bet is to find a paper edition of Marshak's poetry collection, and look for something like What an absent-minded guy (this is how it is called in English Wiki page on Marshak); I am sure the piece would be there.

PS: In the original, he was wearing gloves on his feet.