THE HAPPY HANGMAN
‘Death’s dredger delayed,’ cries the Skull and the Cloak,
I wait to be hung by the ball of the throat.
My friends are the rats, the rope and the rocks,
The Ferryman drunk by the gate of the docks.
The dungeons of my soul racked with my guilt,
To pay for my sins my blood will be spilt,
Too fallen to feel my life has been robbed
My offences to Heaven rise with the smog.
Betwixt Heav’n and Hell my name fit for curse
No appeal judge me granted, my case unrehearsed.
Help never coming, no saviour, no cheer,
Life my tormentor, my enemy clear. [2007]
PEARL FISHERS
Fishermen off the island of Tamarind
Wear stone blocks
Around their necks and ankles
Which keep them underwater
Till their deaths.
Unless a pearl-minded friend
Bewitched by a spout of mercy
Notices the flute of bubbles
And offers a hand of relief
To prolong the Torture of Life. [2007]
RIOT BRIGADE
Flashed all their truncheons bare —
Flashed as they turned in air
Cracking hell’s-grannies there
Dare not a liberal spared
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the tear-gas smoke
Right through the gates they broke
Press-hounds and puppies
Admiring the backhand stroke —
Thrashing and thundered.
Points make prizes, praise
First rozzer to six hundred!
Hippies to the right of them
Hippies to the left of them
Horses behind them
Volleyed and thundered.
Rubber-bullets, shot and shell
Not a horse or hero fell
They that had fought so well.
Each rozzer tots the points
Of broken skulls, legs and joints —
Top shot will scoop the prize
Of points to six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Treble overtime paid
To each of the Riot Brigade
A wedge of six hundred! [2018]
[From the play The Wrong ’Un]
[cf. Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred Tennyson]
HOUSE
I leant upon a high stoned ledge
Smoked summer hangs prison-grey,
Breaking bars of house music
I knew t’was here to stay. [1988]
[cf. Hardy’s A Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.]
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