A couple of days ago, I came across this beautiful musical rendering by Lorena Mckennitt of Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. I am not, generally a fan of musical renderings of poetry. However, Mckennitt’s singing of the poem moved me
I know a young lady of ill repute
Who has great skill in playing the flute.
Her friend Miss Morgan
Plays the vicar’s organ –
They say he’s a man of great repute …!
I found 2 conkers in my desk drawer.
I could return them to the forest floor
Where they would rot and be one
With fruits and flowers long since gone.
Autumn is in the air,
Yet I do not care
To return them to the ground.
A thought, perhaps profound,
We are all bound
To join Mother Nature’s great store
When we, as leaves fall
And become as one
With generations long gone.
Conkers may be put away
In a drawer.
But Autumn’s fall
Says all things must decay.
When a beautiful young lady from Harwich
Went and boarded a first class carriage,
And a ticket collector named Glass
Said, “this ticket is second class!”.
She said, “but I am proposing marriage …!”
As I sat composing poetry
On a windswept afternoon
In the garden.
I heard all the windchimes
Sounding out of tune.
And then came the rain
To mock me
And my poetry.
As the wind blows
The sunshade creaks
And windchimes discordantly speak.
Who knows
Where all this goes
When I sleep.
I once read a critic named Green
Who was famous on the poetry scene.
He wrote my verse
It grows steadily worse.
Now he’s vanished from the poetry scene …
I can be snobby and proud.
I lose myself in crowds
But rarely feel part of them.
Sometimes I feel myself superior
To other men.
But when my final breath
Is lost in death
There will be
No inferior or superior
Just common dust
I am good
Sometimes.
And lose myself in rhymes.
I am blood.
Love.
And in the end
I am words half heard
By readers and friends.
And gathering dust
On books
When a sceptical young lady named Claire
Found a ghost sitting in her chair,
She said, “I must be drunk
As I’m imagining a ghostly monk!”.
And that ghost he glared at Claire!
K Morris - Poet 