Rag & Reed
John lived down in Haywood Lane
Beside the wood, the river's course
And walked each day to see Bernice
His dark-haired lady, for discourse.
She had a melancholy air
A sad and gloomy way with her
And questioned why life wasn't fair,
John never had much sway with her.
He'd argue through the early hours
And speak his love, implicitly,
But she would snap in anger then,
'Your love won't buy the bread for me.'
For seven years they'd to and fro'd
For she would leave, then ask him back,
While he would sit alone and grieve
At every trait that she'd attack.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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A Paupers Parable
Gordon O'Gord and Michael De Ville
Lived next door to an old landfill,
Gordon was nine and a half, they say,
And Michael nine on the following day.
The boys were poor, they played about,
Their parents left them to holler and shout,
They played in the rubbish at Eden's Spill
And gathered their toys from the old landfill.
Gordon's mother was Mary O'Gord,
A lush in every sense of the word,
While Michael's mother, wherever she be,
Has gone to hell in a handbag... See!
One day, while foraging near and far
The boys uncovered an old bell jar,
A great big stopper was still in place,
The surface shone, you could see your face!
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Robbing the Tomb
The year was bad, the crops were burnt,
The dragon turned his back,
The River Wei was almost dry
The earth was brown, and cracked,
The peasant army, risen up
Destroyed the House of Chin,
Set fire to all their palaces,
Their army turned and ran.
But we were left with nothing since
The death of Chin Shi Huang,
That first and greatest Emperor
Who'd ruled across the land,
He lay within his tomb up there
Hid deep within Mount Li,
And left us all with nothing but
A distant memory.
So Wang and Tong, my neighbours
With both Zheng and Shao along,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Demon under the Altar Stone
As a boy in a ruff and a surplice, gown,
I sang in the choir of a country town,
Under the eye of the Reverend Burr
In a church that had stood for a thousand years.
A church so old that it reeked of damp
From the days of an Anglo-Saxon camp,
They'd built their Church on a Druid site
To banish the wailing ghosts at night!
The Romans had slaughtered the Druid priests
In a river of blood at a Druid Feast,
And still their cries could be heard on nights
When the moon gleamed red by the altar lights.
The beams streamed in through the leadlight glass
With an eerie glow that was overcast,
Illumined the ancient altar stone
That covered the Bishop of Cædmon's bones.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Mars
I'm watching the long red sunset
Cross over the tawny sky,
As Phobos tumbles past my head
And Deimos, by and by,
The light's beginning to fracture
As darkness reigns instead,
While Sylvie shakes her long blond hair
As she leaves her fretful bed.
I'm busy at the Astrodome
Checking the roof for leaks,
A tiny meteoric shower,
(The first for seven weeks) :
Has threatened all the oxygen
We'd saved from the garden beds,
For now that Jon has disappeared,
I do his work instead.
The stars begin to glimmer,
Take form in the empty gloom,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Gremlin!
He was posted to Squadron 74
With ten hours flying time,
He knew that he needed a hundred more
Or his life was on the line,
For Biggin Hill was a shambles then,
All craters and UXB's,
As fast as they ferried the Spitfires in
They were beaten down to their knees.
They were hit with Junkers 88's
And Dornier 17's,
They came in high and they came in low,
Like a swarm of angry bees,
They got the workshops, hit the stores,
In an all-out, mass attack,
While Michael Shaw bit his lip, and swore
He was going to get them back.
For a week or so he was on patrol
In a Spitfire group of six,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Hand of Tong Bao Lin
I stood in front of the guillotine
And paled at the sharpened blade,
The motor hummed as my mind went numb
And my body shook and swayed,
The sweat poured into my open eyes
And blinded and burned like sin,
But I had no choice, I had to be free
Of the Hand of Tong Bao Lin.
I'd worked in China for seven years
In the city of old Qingdao,
If I hadn't been such a hero, I
Would still be working there now;
But I got involved in a scuffle there
When a woman was being attacked,
He'd snatched her bag and I snatched it too,
So he turned on me, and hacked.
I'd heard of the mean Hand-Chopper Gang,
Just petty crims on the whole,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Chinese Box
For years, the 'Muse of the Heavenly Gates'
Had stood in the shade of a country lane,
Quietly tending its residents there,
The old, the feeble, the stark insane.
The blurb said, here was a heaven on earth
For the old to pass their declining years,
It said they lived in a quiet content,
The truth was actually quite the reverse.
For Matron Margaret Parker-Lang was
A nun, expelled from the Carmelites,
'Too much of the world', they said of her,
When caught indulging in base delights.
The years had hardened, had turned her hair
An iron grey, and her eyes were cold,
She only smiled when the visitors came
To pay the fees for their aged, in gold.
She didn't encourage their visits, though:
'It's hard, you see, and they get upset,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The End of the Feud
The revellers came to Castle Krag
And whirled in through the hall,
Into the lavish ballroom with
The Lord of Donegal,
He came with his wife and mistresses,
A merry, laughing crew,
To answer the call by Castle Krag
To end their ancient feud!
For there by the central pillars stood
The Baron, John FitzHugh,
A smile on the ravaged, bitter lips
That his enemies once knew,
He was of a mind to end it all,
The bitterness, the strife,
And even smiled at the courtesan
That he'd asked to make his wife.
She'd laughed, and fluttered her fan at him,
'I don't think so, my lord.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Family History
My father left when I was one,
Or maybe two - I don't recall,
I have no memory of him now,
No memory then, now none at all.
It didn't seem important then
I had my mother, she had me,
And Uncle George would call each day,
Call by most nights, and stay for tea.
I wasn't even curious,
My world was perfect as it was,
We lived beside a village green
And travelled by the village bus.
Our house was large, a mansion set
In Parklands, much too large for us,
Whole wings were closed and boarded in,
My mother said, 'it makes less fuss! '
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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