‘If only she hadn’t turned,’ he said,
‘The bread and the bacon burned,
It wouldn’t have made me jump,’ he said,
‘Knock over the butter churn.
Her petticoat was caught in the grate
With coals caught fast in the lace,
And that’s when the skirt went up,’ he said,
‘The flames in her lovely face.’

He carried her into the garden where
The rainwater barrel stood,
And tipped her into the chilling depths
Where the fungus ate at the wood,
The barrel hissed as she thrashed about
Came spluttering up to see,
Was anything left of her golden hair
Or aught of her modesty?

‘I saw the tender length of her thigh
Where charring parted her skirt,
The flames had burned so far and so high
Her cheeks were covered with dirt,
Her hair in tails was stuck to her face
Her bodice unlaced and wide,
I helped her out as best as I could,
She asked if I’d looked… I lied!’

‘That tiny scar you see on her brow
Is all that’s left of the day
Her petticoat was caught in the grate
Before I whisked her away.
I couldn’t wait until she was dry
To ask for her dripping hand,’
She said, ‘Oh well, I knew you were sly,
You looked at my contraband!’

David Lewis Paget

The earth had not been breathing
For an hour when I woke,
So the thought that I’d be leaving
Any time, became a joke,
There was not that faintest rustle
That we think to call a breeze,
When the leaves all rub together with
The swaying of the trees,
And the water lay in stagnant pools
Across the dying ground,
Where there once had flowed a river but
Its stream could not be found.

There was silence where there once had been
The babble of a creek,
If the earth turned on its axis now
That day took half a week,
And where the tide had used to turn,
Advance upon the land,
Its waves had ceased to function
All it left was drying sand,
If that was not enough, its dearth
Reflected in the sky,
In clouds dark brown like bracken
That would crackle up on high.

These clouds of louring thunder merely
Muttered in their pain,
And sent the flash of lightning down
But dry, and without rain,
And nothing that was living stirred
Within my line of view,
Not even what I should have heard
And so, I turned to you.
For there across the counterpane
Your lustrous hair was spread,
And all my world became insane
To know that you were dead.

David Lewis Paget

I married Rosita back in the Spring
As a new world budded with everything,
She sprang from an ancient family
Its heart in the vineyards of Tuscany.

Her skin was dark and her hair blue-black
From the blood of her father’s, way, way back,
Her family tree lay in mystery
So I thought I’d uncover their history.

Down in the damp of the cells, there lay
A mound of their documents, rotting away,
Down where the Monks had toiled below
In the crypt of the Church of De Angelo.

There I would work, and day by day
Would learn of plots where the skeletons lay,
The grinning skulls kept the plans alight
They had once conspired in the dead of night.

I asked Rosita to join me there
Way down below, at the foot of the stair,
And she came gliding, all dressed in white
Like some grim ghost with her girdle tight.

‘Why do you stir these shades,’ she said,
‘When for hundreds of years they’ve lain here dead,
It’s better we leave their old intrigues
Scattered like bones, and Autumn leaves.’

‘This is your line,’ I then replied,
‘Who lived and schemed, and who loved and died,
As one day soon you may bear a son
Who’ll need to know where he’s coming from.’

And sure enough in the month of June
There were signs that he would be coming soon,
Her forehead burned and the glass she sipped
When she came alone to the darkened crypt.

Then shadows moved in the ancient cells
Where the Monks had worked on their evil spells,
And she began to shiver and glow
In the crypt of the Church of De Angelo.

I said what I should have spoken yet
That all I had was a deep regret,
That ever I asked her to get up and go
To the crypt that lay in the church below.

But still she went on that long descent
She seemed obsessed and would not relent,
Till late one night and a baby cried
Delivered on a cold slab, and died.

I keep Rosita so close to me,
And far from her family history,
Something is creeping, evil and slow
In the crypt of the church of De Angelo.

David Lewis Paget

The horseman rode up over the hill
Astride of his coal black steed,
His blood had dried on its withers, till
He may have been dead, indeed,
His battered buckler hung at his side
And his chain mail coat was rust,
He’d left so many behind who died
Of his comrades, turned to dust.

The scars crept over his forehead where
The enemy slashed at his helm,
He’d beaten off so many before
Their numbers had overwhelmed,
He’d planted pikemen deep in the ditch
As they thought they’d pulled him down,
A final ****** in their mortal dust
Saw them set, deep set in the ground.

And now, but one chased him down the hill
His sword raised clear to the sky,
He seemed determined to cleft his pate
Though one might question, ‘Why?’
The battle done on the battlefield
There had just remained these two,
As up there twirled a funnel of smoke
From a single chimney flue.

And out there burst from the cottage door
A woman who’d lain in wait,
For two long years she had hoped and prayed
He’d return to his estate,
He didn’t know about Fontainebleau
Who had offered up his hand,
And swore that when he returned from war
She would take the better man.

But now she stood with her father’s bow
And an arrow from his quiver,
Determined only to greet her man
And the other horseman, never!
They galloped down from the mountainside
In line with her shaking bow,
With him so suddenly unaware
Why the arrow, why the bow?

The second rider had gained the ground
He needed for his charge,
And swung his sword above and around
To clatter his helm, at large,
The rider fell from his forward horse
As his woman raised her bow,
And saw the arrow fly fleet and fast
To the eye of Fontainebleau.

David Lewis Paget

She wore a wig to cover the hair
That was windblown, into her eye,
And topped off that with a raffia hat
To disguise a look so sly,
She sat up there on the balcony
Looking down on the street below,
Watching the heads of the perms and dreads
And noting which way they go.

Her boots were scuffed right up to her knees
Her stockings ragged and torn,
Her linen skirt had dragged in the dirt
From the day it first was worn,
The neighbours called her a demon child
For the savage glare in her eye,
They looked away but they scarce could say
If she’d cursed them, passing by.

She said, ‘Watch out for a matt black car
With its windows tinted and grey,
A single headlight, seen from afar
And the chrome all rusted away,
The driver’s window wound halfway down
To the height of the driver’s eyes,
You’ll best not stare at that wicked frown
He will draw you into his lies.’

The clouds then gathered, the storm came in
From the place that it last had went,
Thunder clashing and lightning flashing
The hail and the sleet it sent,
She pulled her hat down over her head
In hopes that her hair would dry,
Then pointed down to a matt black car,
‘The Devil is driving by!’

David Lewis Paget

The only gas lamp left in the street
Was sitting outside my door,
The rest now lay on a ******* heap
Had been cleared some years before,
But strangely, all of the mist that once
Obscured the street from sight,
Now hung and clung to that gas lamp frame
And darkened my door at night.

I’d stand and stare through my window there
Whenever the mist was high,
Painting the drains and window panes
In the glow of the gas lamp eye,
And those that passed in the street at night
Would flicker and then be gone,
Just like a scene on the silver screen
They would pause, then hurry along.

And that’s when I saw the girl out there
One misty night, about ten,
All dressed up for a late night show
She’d certainly go, but when?
She wore a dress in a style I’d thought
More in Victorian taste,
A woollen shawl and a bonnet, small,
And a bodice of Nottingham lace.

She’d disappear in the swirling mist
Then reappear in the glow,
She’d cling on tight to the gas lamp post,
She wasn’t ready to go,
Perhaps she waited for someone there
I thought, how lucky he’d be,
She looked so beautiful, standing where
I’d wish she was waiting for me.

She seemed to come every friday night
But only during a mist,
If only she would knock at my door
I thought, I couldn’t resist.
One friday night it began to rain,
And she looked in a great distress
Now I could venture to ask her in
If only to save her dress.

I stepped right up and opened the door,
Her image would flicker and fade,
I saw her turn, and stare from the glow
That the old gas lamp had made,
‘So there you are,’ came her breezy voice,
‘I’ve been waiting here, you see,
Every friday at ten o’clock
Since 1893.’

That was the moment the lamp blew out
In a strong and sudden gust,
The glow, the rain and the girl had gone
With the mist remaining, just,
I stand alone by the window pane
And I peer into the mist,
To search forever the girl who came
That I saw, but never kissed.

David Lewis Paget

The storm was raging within, he thought,
Not out in the trees and fields,
It must have strayed in his mouth, and caught
His throat, for the breath it yields,
He sat himself on a wayward bench
Composed his thunderous sighs,
And caught a glimpse of a passing *****
With slumbering, lustrous eyes.

She had auburn hair, and a face so fair
She had dimples set in her cheeks,
She walked the snow in an afterglow
Of the first snowfall for weeks.
He’d sat so long and the storm was strong
As he waited the snow to melt,
She kicked the flurries of snow along
In the inward storm he felt.

Her eyes were a vivid lightning flash
That lit up his restless mind,
Her footsteps, more of a thunder crash
At his heart, but more unkind,
Her smile revealed her perfect teeth
Like a line of pure white stones,
Or headstones, laid in a cemetery
Like some bleached and ageing bones.

Her auburn hair was a-twist out there
All twirled like a plaited bun,
It seemed to fly in his storm-wracked sky
Blotting the morning sun,
Then as she passed, she looked in his eyes
And she saw the hail and sleet,
And caught her breath like a glimpse of death
Or the end of life, complete.

He stood, and held out his hand to her
And she halted in her stride,
Opened her mouth, and thunder clapped
And he felt it crash inside,
‘Nothing you say will draw me in
It would only do me harm,
If I should wed, it wouldn’t be
To you, as the Bride of Storm.’

David Lewis Paget