My clock’s chime
Is out of time,
Yet I care not
For I see
In my clock
A protest, against modernity.
My clock’s chime
Is out of time,
Yet I care not
For I see
In my clock
A protest, against modernity.
When a wicked young lady named White
Rang my doorbell at just after midnight,
And I said, “that’s really not acceptable!”,
And she said, “but you’re not respectable!”,
I had to agree with Miss White
Much poetry has been written
About a country called Great Britain,
Full of antique grandfather clocks
And old maids darning socks,
And miss Marple at her knitting!
I have dreamed many a dream
Where fantasy
Did seem
To be reality.
And I have thought, that I ought
To take care
Lest my dream, turn to nightmare.
For in dreams
All is not what it seems,
And who can fathom
The chasm
That may or may not be
Between a dream,
And reality?
When a young lady named Leigh
Invited me round for tea,
And she and Miss Hocking
Lost more than a stocking,
They made me spill my tea!
When I met young women at dice
Who said, “sir, are you into vice?”,
And I said, “i’m not into betting”,
They said, “but, surely you’re not forgetting,
That there are many forms of vice!”.
Sometimes I think we poets obsess
Too much on grim death.
We hear the blackbird sing
And say “the flowers that bloom
In spring,
And this bird, so full of joy,
Time will destroy,
All too soon”.
We obsess
Over the maid
In her white
dress,
And say, “she will fade
Into the eternal night”.
Yet there is much delight
In the maid,
And when, into the night
Poet and maid
fade,
They may leave to posterity,
More than poetry.
I can imagine you
Minus sock
And shoe.
That would certainly shock.
But you
Are too
Prim and proper
To come a cropper
In that interview!
I see
Me,
Indistinct,
As a shadow,
And think,
This sunny day
And my shadow,
Must fade away
You may imprison
A name
In a euphemism,
To avoid shame,
But it will get free
And be
Known all the same.
Out of discretion,
Or, to avoid pain
You may euphemise
A profession,
But behind those enigmatic eyes
Lies,
The same, much traduced,
Ancient name.