‘Bad Girl’ Lee Moses, 1967
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
—-
Only the last 2 stanzas of Alfred Noyes’ legendary poem
When I was nineteen I recited the whole thing to my boyfriend and wept when he said he didn’t enjoy my performance. I was going through an emotional phase I think.. and in hindsight I hadn’t chosen my audience very well - the only thing I’d ever seen him read were Drum & Bass flyers..
The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix forever,
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle;—
Why not I with thine?
See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven,
If it disdained it’s brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1803-1822)
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE - TALKING HEADS - LIVE FROM 1984
Who doesn’t love this tune? WHO?
He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.
The planet goes on being round.
I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too.
John Masefield 1878 - 1967
I was led into captivity by the bitch business
Not in love but in what seemed a physical necessity
And now I cannot even watch the spring
The itch for subsistence and having become responsibility.
Money the she-devil comes to us under many veils
Tactful at first, calling herself beauty
Tear away this disguise, she proposes paternal solitude
Assuming the dishonest face of duty.
Suddenly you are in bed with a screeching tear-sheet
This is money at last without her night-dress
Clutching you against her fallen udders and sharp bones
In an unscrupulous and deserved embrace.
CH Sisson
As soon as you wake they come blundering in
Like puppies or importunate children;
What was a landscape emerging from mist
Becomes at once a disordered garden.
And the mess they trail with them! Embarrassments,
Anger, lust, fear—in fact the whole pig-pen;
And who’ll clean it up? No hope for sleep now—
Just heave yourself out, make the tea, and give in.
Dick Davis
Thinking of new ways to kill you
and bring you back from the dead,
I try drowning you in the lily pond -
holding your head down
until every bubble of breath
is squeezed from your lungs
and the flat leaves and spiky flowers
float over you like a wreath.
I sit on the stones until I’m numb,
until, among reflections of sky,
water-buttercups, spears of iris,
your face rises to the surface -
a face that was always puffy
and pale, so curiously unchanged.
A wind rocks the waxy flowers, curls
the edges of the leaves. Blue butterfles
appear and vanish like ghosts.
I part the mats of yellow weed
and drag you to the bank, covering
your green algae-stained corpse
with a white sheet. Then, I lift the edge
and climb in underneath -
thumping your chest,
breathing into your mouth.
— Vicki Feaver
