The Queen stepped ahead of the gun carriage
That bore the country’s king,
He’d died, they said, in the early hours
In the palace’s east wing,
And now he rode in a state of grace
As the people lined his way,
His coffin high on the gun carriage
Pulled by a pair of greys.

The Queen was hid by a widow’s veil
That covered the sovereign’s face,
It stopped them seeing the evil smile
Hidden behind the lace,
For way behind in a carriage, mad
With power, and bedecked with rings,
And wearing the crown his father had
He was now, ‘Long live the King!’

The Horse Guards led the procession with
Their sabres raised to the sky,
Then came the Dukes and Duchesses
And never an eye was dry,
The King who died was a pleasant king
And beloved of the people’s grace,
So thousands of flags were waved for him
As he travelled along that place.

Then as they reached Horse Guards Parade
The gun carriage gave a lurch,
It hadn’t been fixed too firmly when
They set it up at the church,
The coffin came flying off the top
Flew open and hit the ground,
That’s when a pile of pale white bones
Were scattered about and around.

And rising up from a mutter, there
Was a roar from the waiting crowd,
It started off with a stutter, then
With a bellowing rage, aloud,
A pile of bones from a new dead king
Just what were they trying to prove?
The Queen was seized by the angry crowd
And her widow’s veil removed.

The Queen with platitudes, tried to speak
But her words were heard in vain,
The people wanted their funeral
There was no way to explain,
They set the coffin back where it was
And ignored her screams and cries,
A single nail in the coffin lid
And a royal to despise.

Then all the way to the cemetery
The people pulled the Queen,
Safe on top of the gun carriage
And only a muffled scream,
The King, arrested, was buried first
In a hole, a deeper drop,
And then his mother, as would beseem
In her coffin, on the top.

And all the while the old king sat
On a terrace in Tuscany,
Sampling all the local wines
And savouring to be free,
Never again to hear the whine
Of that dreadful troll, the Queen,
Or kissing another baby’s head,
Life was but a dream!

David Lewis Paget

She lived in a tiny cottage
On top of a sea-bound bluff,
Looked down on the cold blue waters
In fair weather, and in rough,
The smoke that curled from her chimney piece
Was snatched away by the wind
So couldn’t obscure the window where
She stood, and her eyes were pinned.

She saw the gaggle of soldiers
Rise up, and out of the marsh,
And remembered a past encounter,
Their treatment of her was harsh,
She snipped the lock on the window, then
She hurried to bar the door,
Raised the trap to the cellar, and
Slid down to the cellar floor.

She lay in hopes they would pass on by,
Would ignore her humble home,
Would think that there was a man nearby
Not a woman there, alone,
She knew of the fate of others who
Had invited the soldiers in,
For many a soldier’s bairn was born
The result of a soldier’s sin.

She heard them muttering round the house
And tapping the window pane,
Beating a tattoo on the door
Till she thought she’d go insane,
They’d seen the smoke from her chimney piece
And they called, ‘Hey you inside,
We need to shelter the night at least,
It’s wintry here outside.’

But still she lay on the cellar floor
As quiet as any mouse,
She wasn’t going to let them in
To her tiny little house,
She heard the crash as the timber gave
Away on her cottage door,
And heard the thump of their feet above
As they stomped across her floor.

She heard the sound of their puzzlement
When they found the cottage bare,
‘Somebody must have lit the fire,
But now, they’re just not there.’
She heard them smashing her crockery
And drinking beer from her ***,
She never had enough food to spare
But she knew they’d eat the lot.

Down below was a musket that
She’d kept well oiled and cleaned,
Along with a horn of powder that
She’d felt worthwhile redeemed,
She found the shot and she rammed it home
There was nothing left to chance,
The first to open that trapdoor would
Begin his final dance.

The night came on and they settled down,
Above, she could hear them snore,
She wondered whether they’d go away
When the sun came up, once more,
But then, sometime in the early hours
She heard the trapdoor creak,
And a pair of eyes were hypnotised
As they saw the musket speak.

There once was a tiny cottage
On top of a sea-bound bluff,
It’s now burnt out, just a shell without
A roof or a door, it’s rough,
While down in the cold blue waters
Lies a woman, drowned and dead,
And up on the bluff, a soldier’s grave,
Buried, without a head.

David Lewis Paget

He lived in a tiny attic, set
Way up on the second floor,
I’d never have known he lived there, but
He left his shoes by the door,
A note tucked into the left shoe said
‘They’re yours if I don’t return!’
The right said, ‘Put on a dead man’s shoes,
And know that you’re going to burn!’

The boarding house was for down-and-outs
So you know where my life was at,
The final link in an endless chain
Since they threw me out of my flat,
I had no job, I had no friends
My family moved away,
They hadn’t left an address for me
So here’s where I had to stay.

I heard him shuffling past my door
With a walk like bone on bone,
His eyes were dim and his face was grim
And his skin as grey as stone,
I chanced to be in the hallway once
But he just stared straight ahead,
I said ‘Hello,’ but he rattled back,
‘I’ve just returned from the dead!’

He’d sit awhile on the balcony,
In the fading rays of the sun,
Trying to tan the greyness out
But the pallor was not undone,
I grabbed a chair and I sat by him
And he finally looked my way,
His eye delved into my very soul,
‘What did you want to say?’

‘You look like a man of secrets,’
Were the first words that I thought,
‘Maybe you have an insight into
Things that I might be taught?’
‘There’s nothing here in your life, it’s clear,
That would help,’ he gave a sigh,
‘I only know of the deathly fear
That is yours, when once you die.’

‘Nobody knows what happens then,’
I said, ‘for it’s understood,
Once you have left this mortal coil
You’re dead, and you’re dead for good!’
The old man shivered and shook his head
‘I’m the only one who knows,
For I die nightly in my bed
And return when the first **** crows!’

I didn’t believe him way back then,
I hardly believe him now,
But I crept into his midnight room
And I put my hand on his brow.
His flesh was icy cold to the touch,
He had no pulse or breath,
His eyes were pointed up in his head
And I knew he was caught in death.

But still he came on shuffling out
In the first grey light of dawn,
After the **** had crowed, he said,
When his body began to warm,
I asked him what he had seen out there
While caught in the clasp of death,
And he spoke of the chambers of despair
When he finally caught his breath.

‘The chambers are lit with a flickering light
From a million candle’s glow,
A million tubs of candlewax
That light up the rooms below,
And set in deep in the candlewax
Is the shape of a human form,
The head protruding just like a wick
Who wish they’d never been born.’

‘The flames are burning the tortured flesh
The heads are trying to scream,
I pass along them on right and left
As if it’s a nightmare dream,
But this is the fate of terrorists
And suicide bombers there,
Their one reward for the cause they fought
An eternity of despair.’

I turned away and I felt quite sick
At the things death held in store,
And all the other horrors he’d seen
When he’d nightly passed death’s door.
‘How long must you go on suffering this,’
I said, as I turned my head,
But the old man sat in his rocking chair
Quite still, and finally dead!

David Lewis Paget

‘There are giants out in the hinterland,
There are monsters, horrible frogs,
There are birds of prey out there all day
There are streets of savage dogs.
There are bakers, making their ****** pies
From the girls found out on the street,
I think you’d better stay home and play
For you don’t know what you’ll meet.’

Janelle sat curled in the corner, with
Her eyes as wide as the moon,
She’d always led such a sheltered life
In a house, as dark as the tomb.
She’d never questioned her father, nor
The dreadful things that he taught,
He told her he was protecting her
For life out there was fraught.

She’d peer on out of the windows, see
The trees that waved in the breeze,
‘The sap on the lower branches will
Reach out, and capture your knees.’
She’d hear the wind in its savage bursts
That waited to take her breath,
And wondered why she would have to die
But the world outside was death.

She barely remembered her mother
Who had gone by the age of three,
A wistful smile for a fretful child,
He said she was drowned at sea.
But he often sat by a garden plot
When he said it was safe that day,
And planted a bed of forget-me-nots
To keep grave diggers away.

He’d only leave for a weekly shop
And he’d wear a coat and hat,
Dodging over some fences to
Avoid the giant rat,
The snakes were fierce in the supermart
And he said, ‘I do declare,
Don’t ever let me forget my hat
Or the bats will get in my hair.’

Janelle would sit by a mirror, and
Despair at her pale, white face,
She rarely got any sun on it
And her body was starting to waste,
Her legs were thin and her arms were skin
And bone, her ******* were small,
Her ribs would show in the mirror’s glow
She hadn’t much weight at all.

Whenever he’d leave her on her own
He’d be sure to lock the door,
‘We don’t want the zombies creeping in
And dragging you through the floor!’
He said they lived right under the house
But only came out at night,
And that’s when the cats would shriek and yowl,
They put up an awesome fight!

One day he went and forgot to lock,
He must have misplaced the key,
Janelle stood still by the open door
As the wind blew fitfully,
She took a breath, and it wasn’t death
But the sweetest of perfume,
The air was laden with scent that day
With the roses in full bloom.

She ventured into the garden, felt
The grass, so soft on her feet,
While the preying birds sat up in the trees,
But all that they did was tweet,
There were no bats, nor a giant rat,
Though a dog came wagging its tail,
And she saw a man in a crimson van
Pull up, delivering mail.

She finally flung her arms up high
In a moment then, and cried,
‘The world is wonderful, he was wrong,
He lied,’ she said, ‘He lied!’
By the time he arrived back home again
Janelle was gone with the wind,
But a policeman stood in his lounge and said,
‘At last! Well, do come in!’

David Lewis Paget

When I met, and married my wife,
I opened a secret door,
I knew that her mother, Grace, was strange
But I didn’t know what for.
They spoke so low that I couldn’t hear
In a mother/daughter pact,
But Ellen, she was my holy grail
Til I found it was an act.

I’d been brought up in the English way
Of roast beef, fruit and veg,
The mint that grew and the rhubarb too
By our garden’s privet hedge,
I didn’t know there were other things
That were quite beyond my ken,
But she’d come up through a different school
Though I didn’t know it then.

They say you should check the mother out
If you want to save your tears,
For what the mother is like right now
Is your wife in thirty years,
And Grace was skinny and pastie-faced
With a rock-hard, gimlet eye,
While Ellen was soft and curvy then
And just a trifle shy.

Grace was running a cuisine club
For the village ladies all,
Every Wednesday they’d go en masse
Down to the village hall,
Ellen said there were treats in store
But I didn’t really see,
Not til she brought it home with her
That she’d try it out on me.

The first of the treats she brought on home
Almost knocked me through a loop,
I said, ‘What’s that in the steaming bowl,’
And she answered ‘Batwing soup.
You might need a knife and fork for it,
The wings have a leathery feel,
It won’t take long to get used to it
It tastes a little like eel.’

After I’d gagged and choked a bit
I managed to keep some down,
I said, ‘I’d rather have beef, my love,’
But she stood awhile, and frowned,
‘I’ve made you a special omelette,
Of turtle legs and bees,
Bound together by turkey eggs
And just a little cheese.’

I couldn’t say what I thought of it,
She would be dismayed, my wife,
I knew the love she’d put into it
It would only cause us strife,
But every Wednesday she’d bring one home
A treat for me to try,
Her casserole was a lucky dip
And snake in her cottage pie.

I suffered it for a month or more
Then I put my case to her,
‘I draw the line at toadskin wine,
And a pie with rodent fur,
I love you, Ellen, I really do
But your mother gives me the creeps,
Her witches recipes just won’t do,
I hate ragwort and leeks.’

We came to a final arrangement,
She could do what she’d always done,
The whisk broom under the stairs, she said
Was her idea of fun,
I try to ignore the pointy hat
That she wears when the moon is high,
But she never feeds me toads and rats
Though her mother asks her, ‘Why?’

David Lewis Paget

I’d decided that I’d drown myself
And waded from the shore,
If I had to live without you
I would want to live no more,
For you’d shouted that you’d done with me,
There was no second chance,
Though I’d loved and thought you needed me
You ended our romance.

They had said it was more pleasant than
A gunshot to the chest,
That you’d slowly drift away, and
Wouldn’t leave quite such a mess,
And I didn’t fancy dying from
A bullet in the head,
It would spoil the later viewing
Even though I would be dead.

I could always cut my throat, I thought,
To make you scream and shout,
For my blood would stain your carpet
You would never get it out,
But I thought it might be painful for
That thirty second bleed,
And at best, I’m quite the coward,
It was pain I didn’t need.

So I came in my depression to
The shingle on the shore,
And I watched the massive breakers
As the tide came in once more,
Then it struck me, it was easy
All I had to do was wade,
Way on out to deeper water where
My body could be laid.

I’d be caught by undercurrents,
Taken right out by the rip,
Would be ****** right down and drowned on this
My final deadly trip,
So I pushed on out and waded there,
And pushed against the tide,
Though I wouldn’t be quite honest if
I didn’t say I cried.

Every time I made a hundred yards
The breakers took me in,
As if the white capped rollers wouldn’t
Help me in my sin,
They were thrusting me back shoreward
Every time I tried to turn,
Until I was exhausted
And I found I couldn’t drown.

Then I staggered from the water and
I fell upon my face,
And I thought your voice was calling
Till I looked and saw you, Grace,
You were holding out a towel while
You stood and caught your breath,
Then you said, ‘Get dry, and come back home,
It’s cold, you’ll catch your death.’

David Lewis Paget

She lived in a cottage, made with bones
Her garden, ringed by teeth,
All from the shipwrecked sailors floating
In from the hidden reef,
You couldn’t see when the tide was high
But the rocks lay down, and tore,
Down where the tide swept in the keels
That had sailed too close to shore.

The bodies were floating in for days
When the storm would calm, abate,
Bloodied and torn, their sailor ways
Were left to unfeeling fate,
The crows would gather and crowd the beach
As they ripped each corpse to shreds,
Tearing the flesh regardless, whether
The man was alive, or dead.

The beach turned into a boneyard, under
A blue and perfect sky,
With nobody willing to ask it,
The obvious question, ‘Why?’
But she in the boneyard cottage knew
When she harvested the beach,
For every ship, as her cottage grew
Left the bones, so white and bleached.

And there on the hearth of the kitchen lay
A skull that had been her own,
The one true love of her darling years
Who had promised to build their home,
He denied her plea and had gone to sea,
Was caught in a sudden storm,
Came rolling over the reef one day
With blood on his uniform.

And now, whenever a distant sail
Appears from near or far,
She runs on out to the bluff and screams
To God, ‘Wherever you are.’
She summons up from the depths a storm
With wind and a blinding rain,
And giant rollers that head for shore
That carry her lover’s pain.

It’s then that the skull on the hearth lights up,
A glow from its empty eyes,
And then a terrible screaming from
A mouth, that had once been sighs,
She knows he wants her to save the ship
She’s luring onto the rocks,
But whispers a curse at the fatal rip
‘On all dead men, a pox!’

David Lewis Paget

I walked along a cobbled street
That echoed, clattered, at my feet
And thought of many feet before
Who’d walked this way, but nevermore.

Those cobbles always seemed like home
Had been there since the days of Rome,
My father led me first that way
And his as well, before my day.

Then back, as far as we can see
Those cobbles lay through history,
Though worn and scuffed to mark their age
As walkers shuffled off each page.

Each came, eyes bright, a will to win
A glow without, a fire within,
Determined each to make their mark,
Their headstones now loom in some park.

Their needs and deeds, it must be said
Are soon forgotten, now they’re dead,
Though once it seemed their world was won
It shone and shimmered, then was gone.

And love loomed large in every tale
That walked those cobbles, made men pale
And listless, for the love they lost,
While candles lit each Pentecost.

And I think of those years gone by
That wrought from me a whispered sigh
Of love, I thought, that was well spent,
Was there at Christmas, gone at Lent.

And so I walk these cobblestones
That trip my years, and make old bones,
I turned, and lost that dream somehow,
For that was then, and this is now…

David Lewis Paget

Down in the village where I grew up
That sat on the eastern shore,
Viking marauders had once shown up
To raze, to pillage and more.
They cut a swathe through the countryside
And the least that they did was ****,
To leave descendants with flame red hair
From Skorn, to the Widnes Cape.

You’ll see the genes they left in our eyes
That startle you when we stare,
A brighter blue than the summer skies
Will follow you everywhere.
Then some had come to settle and thrive
While the local folk would cower,
They left their mark in the village park
By building a Norman Tower.

I don’t know when they added the clock
It must have been later times,
I only know that as I grew up
I lived my life by its chimes.
It boomed on out through the countryside
Would even sound through the night,
We found it safer to stay inside
Than risk a dying in fright.

The strangest things had happened at night
That seem aligned to its chimes,
When ghostly shapes would gather and fight
Drawn back from previous times.
And men were found by the Norman Tower
Their faces twisted in fear,
Their bodies hacked, stabbed in the back
But the swords were never there.

It almost always happened at ten
And just when the chimes rang out,
I’d lie abed, counting the chimes
And hear a desperate shout.
It got so bad that a friend and I
Decided to hide and see,
We climbed at nine to the top of the tower
To check on the mystery.

We hung on over the parapet
That, castellated in stone,
Would let us view, if anything new
Appeared at the final tone.
The vicar rode outside on his bike
Just as the clock struck ten,
And suddenly there, in front and behind,
An army of fighting men.

They knocked the vicar clean off his bike,
And sliced a sword though his head,
Then hacked and ****** through his mortal dust
To leave him lying there, dead.
My friend cried out, on seeing the blood,
He couldn’t disguise his fear,
While I shrank back, with them looking up,
I said, ‘They’re coming up here.’

He made a dash for the tower stair
Intent on getting back down,
They must have met at the halfway mark,
I found him dead on the ground.
The coroner said that he simply fell,
He wouldn’t listen to me,
He ruled the vicar was murdered in
What seemed was a mystery.

But someone must have listened to me
For shortly, up in the clock,
Somebody wedged the workings tight
With a huge old hickory block.
There hasn’t been but a single chime
From the tower clock since then,
Those ancient hands still stand in a line
At just one minute to ten.

David Lewis Paget

Madison mounted her coal black mare
In the yard of the Smugglers Inn,
Her coat was black and her hair was fair
And her jodhpurs tucked well in,
The sky was in a threatening mood
With its thunderheads from hell,
As lightning forked on the ancient rood
And the rain teemed down as well.

‘You need to get to the Laird,’ I cried,
‘Tell him to haste to me,
Another day and she may have died,
I’m trying to set her free.
But the Pikemen stand outside her door
And they say they guard her skin,
There were locks and chains on her door before
Up there, in the Smugglers Inn.’

‘Tell him to bring his gallant troop
To dismay the Duke of Bray,
He means to imprison his daughter
In his tower, the Lady Grey,’
The Pikemen said that I’d lose my head
If I tried to breach her door,
And wouldn’t answer whenever I asked,
‘What is she locked in for?’

So Madison wheeled the mare around
And she put it to the spur,
If any could ride a horse to ground
I knew that it was her,
She headed off to the Castle Croft
Head bent to the driving rain,
With lightning flashing around her mount
I watched her across the plain.

What seemed to take forever, I thought,
Was merely an hour or two,
But then my fears were set at naught
As the troop came jangling through.
Each man had raised his sabre and
He’d kept his powder dry,
My heart was surging within me as
The troop came riding by.

And then, at last, was Madison
Still riding with the Laird,
Determined then to save her friend,
To show her that she cared.
The Pikemen soon were beaten down
Were lost in the affray,
I never did catch a glimpse of him,
Their lord, the Duke of Bray.

It took a moment to smash the locks
On the door of Lady Grey,
And all the troop had cheered out loud
As the chains, they fell away.
Madison was the first in line
To embrace the one within,
But we were not to know what lay
Up there, in the Smugglers Inn.

The Lady, held in a firm embrace
Had staggered out through the door,
But blood and pustules were on her face
Like we’d never seen before.
A dying Pikemen called, ‘You fools,
You’ve unleashed a bitter ague,
And then he sighed just before he died,
‘Behold, you have the plague!’

David Lewis Paget

They’d sat beneath the sweltering sun
For an hour, or maybe two,
Lost somewhere on the Birdsville Track
They didn’t know what to do.
‘Stay with the car,’ said Derek Beech,
‘They’ll come and find us soon.’
‘Better we walk,’ said Colleen Scott,
‘Til we find that last lagoon.’

They glared and bickered, and pursed their lips,
The battlelines were drawn,
He to stay with the crippled car,
She to go wandering on.
‘The temperature’s hitting fifty C
If you go, you won’t survive.’
‘Rather than dehydrate out here,
I want to get out alive!’

They’d driven through Cooper’s Crossing
As the day was becoming dark,
He had been keen for pushing on
Though she had wanted to park.
The driver had the advantage, so
Their lights cut into the night,
In through the gibber country, where
The tracks crossed, left and right.

They’d entered the Stony Desert when
The first of the tyres blew,
They’d only taken a single spare,
She said, ‘That’s down to you!’
It took an hour to change it
Trying to jack the car in the sand,
The jack would sink in the bulldust mix
So she had to lend a hand.

By morning they were completely lost
And the radiator boiled,
The lights had flashed all over the dash
And the motor suddenly stalled.
‘I can’t believe that we’re stuck out here,’
She’d wailed, and punched his arm,
‘Why did I ever listen to you?
I should have stayed on the farm.’

‘Maybe you should,’ said Derek Beech,
His temper beginning to show,
‘You’re not much good at the outback life,
Go back to your Auntie Flo!’
‘That’s it,’ she said, and she pulled the ring
He’d given her days before,
Flung it down in his lap, and watched
It bounce to the desert floor.

She took a bottle of water, then
Stomped off the way that they came,
‘If you get lost you will die out there
With only yourself to blame!’
She took a short cut back to the track
They’d turned off, hours before,
And gradually drank the water, though
She knew that she needed more.

The endless dry and barren land
Had not seen rain for years,
The track wiped out by the drifting sand,
Colleen was soon in tears,
She stopped beneath a coolibah tree
Surviving on its own,
And rested there in the paltry shade
In the land of the great unknown.

While Derek sat in an agony
Of doubts, to cloud his mind,
Should he have gone along with her,
Or should he have stayed behind?
Some hours had passed before he rose
To place the ring on the car,
Along with a note, ‘I love you, girl,
But I don’t know where you are.’

He started to walk the way she’d gone,
The sun, it was going down,
He knew that hope was a step too far
As he walked along, and frowned,
If only he’d thought to call her name
Snapped out of his mute dismay,
He might have met her along the track,
Coming the other way.

They were only a hundred yards apart
When they passed like ships in the night,
And she had stumbled back to the car
When the sun put gloom to flight,
She found the note and she found the ring
And she placed it back on her hand,
Then sank beside their wreck of a car
And was covered by drifting sand.

While he was found, propped up by the tree
In the glare of the blazing sun,
His final thought of the way they’d fought
That never could be undone.
But love was there in the desert air
As she lay, the ring on her hand,
While he clung on to the bottle, she’d
Flung empty, down on the sand.

David Lewis Paget

How on earth did I arrive here
In this dark and dismal place,
When it all began with love, but
Of that love there’s not a trace,
When you first began to spell me
I was helpless in your clutch,
Like an oak, you tried to fell me,
One who didn’t matter much.

You would praise me up and raise me
When it suited you to play
With my juvenile emotions
You could have had me any day,
Though you never looked much further
Than the day that you would tire
Of your plaything, or the way things
Would consume me in your fire.

I was not more than a bangle or
A bracelet for your wrist,
You would get me so entangled that
I never could resist,
Then you tossed me in your tempests
Left me battling your storms,
Till you had me question love and
What it was, in all its forms.

Then you plunged me into darkness
Black as pitch, without a light,
And I wondered at this starkness
When you failed to say goodnight,
I have stumbled on your pathway
In my folly, now it seems,
But have missed the open gateway
In my search for love and dreams.

David Lewis Paget

She lived there still, in the house on the hill
Though she hadn’t been seen for years,
The Lady Margaret Hermanville
She’d lived in a mist of tears,
Her wedding day had been bright and gay
When her groom arrived at the door,
The devious Baron Wűrrtenberg
With his soldiers, back from the war.

The wedding service was short and sweet
Was held by a priest defrocked,
Was hurried through from the point of view
Of all that the Baron mocked,
He’d only wanted her dowry then
But claimed he wanted her hand,
And with it the House of Hermanville
With a thousand acres of land.

She’d gone alone to her wedding bed
While the Baron caroused ‘til dawn,
And lay awake with a constant ache,
What had she done, so wrong?
He made his quarters down with his men
While she languished up in her room,
But sought an audience then with him
On the following afternoon.

‘Where is the love you promised me
When you came and begged for my hand?
I may be wed but I’m now in dread
That you wanted me for my land!
Prove to me you’ve a noble heart
That there’s more to you than a gun,
And take your bride, for my barren womb
Should be stirring now with your son.’

The Baron laughed, and waved her away
‘It’s enough that you have my ring,
You have the title of Wűrrtenberg,
Of my heart, not even a thing.
I have a frau in Bavaria
Will be coming to live here soon,
So get you away to the Servants Hall,
You and your barren womb.’

The Lady Margaret stood in shock,
A tear had formed at her eye,
Her face as pale as the clouds that formed
Above on an azure sky,
‘I’ll go and petition the Cardinal,
I’ll have this wedding annulled.’
‘You’ll not be leaving this house again,’
He said, and her eyes had dulled.

A year went by and she sought some peace
Below in the Servants Hall,
While he went riding to fox and hounds
And didn’t see her at all,
His Gretchen came, to lord it above
At the feasts for his Men-at-Arms,
A flashy, rude, Bavarian trull
Who was loose with all of her charms.

The Baron watched her flirt with his men,
Grew angrier by the day,
He had her locked in an old sow’s pen
And sent all his men away,
He said, ‘You want to live like a pig
Then I’ll give you your heart’s desire,
He fed her truffles and day-old slop
And she slept on hay from the byre.

Back in the hall, he paced and paced
His echoing feet alone,
Began to think about Margaret
And thought that he might atone,
He heard the merriment down below
Drift up from the Servants Hall,
Went down the cavernous limestone steps
Where his wife was sat by the wall.

‘What’s this?’ he said, as he wandered in,
His wife was seven months gone,
The servants gathered around her there
And her face, it fairly shone.
‘You’ll never guess who the father is,
It could have been one of two,
You sent me off with a barren womb
But the only Barren is you!’

‘So pack your bags, you can leave us now,
You should have been more aware,
The deed of settlement that you signed
For my dowry said, ‘Beware!’
The house and land wouldn’t pass to you
But devolve to my first born son,
It could have been yours, but now, you see
It belongs to my little one.’

My mother never married again,
I’m lord of all I can see,
A thousand acres of farming land
My mother bequeathed to me,
I’ve watched her cry and I’ve watched her mourn
That I’m not the son of a Lord,
I’m proudly the son of a working man
With a mother that I adored!

David Lewis Paget

I was doing a crossword puzzle
Yesterday, to pass the time,
The clues were all about animals
Both across, and down the line,
The wife was out in the kitchen
And I’d call the harder clues,
While she’d reply with a patient sigh
As she cooked two different stews.

It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought
Some clues were quite obscure,
Though each would bring up some animal
That we should have known, for sure,
But as I scribbled across the squares
I found some didn’t fit,
I’d call, ‘Lynette, have you worked it yet?’
But she’d never heard of it.

She’d said, ‘Two heads are better than one,’
And I thought she might be right,
The names that came out too long, I thought
Must be an oversight,
But when they clashed with the downward clues
And I crumpled up my hat,
That furry purr by the fireside there
Was just a common Dat.

And things that flew in the night became
Some thing they called a Rel,
They must be horrible creatures, like
Some creature based in Hell,
But as it crossed the Ordothlicon
I knew it must be right,
For on the left was a Rerr that leapt
On a dark and stormy night.

She said that really my spelling might
Be not quite up to scratch,
The ones that I knew as Pidgins flew
The coop in quite a batch,
And honey gathering Lees in trees
Were paired with wild Gorrils,
While Madgers seemed to be burrowing
All though the distant hills.

‘I’ve never heard of these animals,’
I said, in quite a stew,
Lynette called out from the kitchen that
She didn’t know them, too,
I walked around and I locked the doors
And I set each window latch,
In case that some of them wandered in
Like Carroll’s Bandersnatch.

I’m loth to wander the streets at night
If Rogs are on the prowl,
And keep away from the Cagpies nests
And the things that say ‘Miaowl’,
It seems that Berons are on the beach
And Peagulls in the air,
Lynette said better we stay inside
Than to get Peegull in our hair.

David Lewis Paget

I set out on a filthy evening
Jogged the stream and under the bridge,
Headed into the pouring rain
And over St. Alban’s Ridge,
I heard some footsteps running behind
But never could turn to see,
For who would venture out in the rain
Just to be following me?

I’d heard the following steps before,
Had stopped, and I’d turned around,
Scanned the bushes and hedgerows
There was no-one there to be found,
I thought I could hear some breathing
From a bush, or hid in a tree,
Though nothing stirred but a restless bird,
Nothing that I could see.

I’d always travelled the leaf strewn path
By the early sun of the day,
But sometimes ran when the darkness fell
By the light of a moonlight ray,
I loved the scent of the pine fresh air
It made me alive, and free,
It wasn’t until I courted Claire
That the footsteps followed me.

They’d stop whenever I stopped, and then
Would start again when I jogged,
I thought at first it was just a trick,
An echo, bounced off a log,
But sometimes, there in the silence when
I stopped while catching my breath,
I’d feel the hairs beginning to stir
Way up on the back of my neck.

I turned to run by a farmer’s field
That was stacked with new mown hay,
Reflecting light from the pale moonlight,
Awaiting the farmer’s dray,
I heard the footsteps behind me squelch
In the mud from the driving rain,
I called, ‘You’d better come out tonight,
By God, or I’ll cause you pain!’

I pulled a glittering knife blade out
I’d hidden, deep in its sheath,
Scanned the track by the farmer’s field
And the heather, down on the heath,
But nothing stirred in the pale moonlight
Though I saw its tracks in the mud,
And as I watched in a gathering fright,
They seemed to be filling with blood.

I turned and ran in a panic then
And weaved my way through the trees,
My heart was beating, my mind was numb
I slipped, and fell to my knees,
I finally found the giant oak
Where I knew that a corpse would lie,
The moon was sending a single beam
And lighting the dead man’s eye.

I’d propped him there when I’d slashed his throat
To free up the hand of Claire,
She’d been bereft when he disappeared,
Would never have found him there.
I’d meant to come back, bury the bones
But still he sat by the tree,
And now the footsteps joined with him there,
His eye was glaring at me.

They followed a trail of blood, they said,
The searchers said, when they came,
And I was cowering by the corpse,
They said that I was to blame.
They’ve put me here in a darkened cell
Where I sit and stare at the floor,
And hear the shuffle of footsteps there
On the other side of the door.

David Lewis Paget

It stood by my uncle’s hatstand for
As long as I can recall,
This ugly wooden carving, leering
Staring out from the wall,
My mother would say, ‘It’s evil,’
That it wasn’t fit to see,
Not for a young impressionable,
By that, she just meant me.

It used to give me the shivers
Every time that I passed its way,
It had a glare of malevolence
I felt, in a mute dismay,
My uncle brought it from Africa
A memento of his time
Seeking out the Azuli tribe
Who lived in a tropic clime.

‘I think his name was Jabuka,’
My uncle said to a friend,
‘One of those baleful spirits that
Was said to torture men,
He’d pluck your eyes from their sockets
If you saw what you shouldn’t see,
And infected men with a virus
That would **** their family.’

For years it sat in abeyance,
Whatever the power it bore,
There was never a hint of impatience
As it sat, and stared by the door,
It wasn’t until my uncle hired
A sultry African maid,
That evil entered the atmosphere
Of the house where I went, and played.

I think it was then that I noticed
There was something strange at large,
My hair rose up as I walked on by,
An electrostatic charge,
It prickled in all my fingers
Ran up the hairs of my arm,
I’d lie if I should deny that day
I felt a sense of alarm.

While little dark skinned Mbutu,
Would bow when she’d dust it off,
Would mumble some words in Zulu
That I could make nothing of,
I saw the fear in her eyes the day
I glanced off it in the hall,
‘Never to touch Jabuka, son
Or him rage is fearful!’

It must have been close on midnight
I heard, when over and done,
My uncle came on Mbutu
Stark naked before ‘the one’,
It must have been some strange African rite
As she danced, she gave weird cries,
But then next day, my uncle lay
And bled from both of his eyes.

My aunt then died of Ebola,
No more than a week from then,
The virus grew, then Mbutu too
Was lost to the world of men,
I sat by my uncle’s bedside
At the hospital by the park,
When he said, ‘Oh Ben, I’m a fool,’ and then,
‘God, but this room is dark!’

He told me to take Jabuka
And carry it out that day,
‘But while you carry that evil thing
Be sure you’re looking away,
There’s petrol out in the potting shed,
Though barely a gallon or two,
Make sure you douse it over the head,
You know what you have to do.’

I watched the flames as they roared and claimed
The wood of that idol’s gaze,
And felt the surge of an evil urge
Attack, in so many ways,
I knew I’d watched what I shouldn’t see
As I felt it rise in my hair,
And lost one eye as it bled bone dry,
It’s lucky I have a spare!

David Lewis Paget

It comes to us all, we ask ourselves
Is love the source of bliss?
If true, then why did I love her so
And yet feel so amiss?
Could it be conversation that
Would bind us, heart to heart,
Or physical stimulations that
Would sour, before we part.

‘It’s always been such a mystery,’
I said to Anne Marie,
‘What was the force that drew us in,
Why did you cleave to me?’
She shrugged, and thought for a moment,
‘Why must you philosophise?
I thought there was something welcoming
About your soft, grey eyes.’

It wasn’t enough, I knew it then
There had to be more than this,
How could you build a relationship
On a stolen midnight kiss?
I needed to know the locks and chains
That would bind us, as they should,
On through a distant future, when
In thrall to a different mood.

I told her that I was leaving her
On a cold dark winter’s morn,
‘I knew that you would,’ said Anne Marie
As the sun came up at dawn,
‘You’re not content with the time we’ve spent
So your love was not for me.’
I couldn’t tell how my heart was full
With my love for Anne Marie.

But I thought it had to be tested,
Love’s not sure ‘til it’s tasted pain,
By leaving, there could be one result
And that one result was gain,
It would either set us apart for life
As our ardour died in the flame,
Or qualities more substantial would
Draw us together again.

I knew it was quite a gamble, that
It could well change my life,
Tampering with a primal force
Could only bring me strife,
But love would have to be strong as steel,
Unwavering in its course,
To prove that everything else was real
Not waning from the source.

I disappeared for a month or more
But where, I didn’t say,
None of our mutual friends had seen
Me out, by light of day,
I thought to set up a mystery
To prove an ancient saw,
That absence makes the heart fonder
As it did, in times of war.

Whatever I sought to prove, I did,
The proof was in the gruel,
With plenty of time to ponder, though
The lesson learned was cruel.
I crept up there on a starless night
And I heard her whispered lies,
‘I thought there was something welcoming
About your soft, blue eyes.’

David Lewis Paget

The city was laid like a wasteland
Like a rusting, crumbling sore,
Half of the houses were boarded up
Along a neglected shore,
The spirit had long gone out of it
That had made the city great,
Men fifty miles to the south of it
Were determining its fate.

Way up on the Presidential floor
Was a group of greedy men,
The czars of the old industrial core
Who had bled the town back then,
‘The real estate’s a disaster,’ said
A man who had been the Mayor,
‘The auto plants are a rusting heap,’
Said the man who held the Chair.

‘We’ve got more pensioners on the funds
Than workers in the plants,
There’s crime and violence in every street
And the Unions make demands.
So what’s the conclusion, gentlemen,
Do we give this plan its head?’
‘Whatever we do, it’s much too late,
The city’s as good as dead!’

And that’s how they came to build ‘The Tower’
To illuminate the sky,
‘There’s plenty of work for everyone
At a hundred storeys high!’
Nobody knew just what it did
Or what they were building for,
They only knew that they had a wage,
Could hold up their heads once more.

A central lift in The Tower went up
And down ten times a day,
Taking tools and materials
To restrict the Tower’s sway,
‘They say we’re going to go High-Tech
And they’re closing down the Plants,
The days of auto’s have gone for good
But they won’t tell us their plans.’

The Tower was built within the year
With a gaping hole up top,
A semi drove through the streets one day
And by The Tower, it stopped.
It carried a massive box-like thing
With a mass of flashing lights,
Was loaded into the lift, and sent
Up on its maiden flight.

They took it up and it crowned The Tower
While the people watched in awe,
There hadn’t been people in the streets
Like this since the Second War.
A massive counter was counting down
As the people stood and cheered,
‘I hope it’s not what I think it is,’
Said a man with a long, white beard.

While down in the Presidential Suite
Just fifty miles away,
A group of men put their sunnies on
And stood by the window bay,
‘Well how do you clear a festering slum,’
Said one, as he watched the clock,
While back at The Tower a sign lit up
And the word was ‘Ragnarok!’

David Lewis Paget

He took to the skies most every night
Unfurling his wings of black, not white,
Invisible in the night sky when
He hovered above the world of men.

‘Go out and bring me a ****** girl,’
His master bade from his darkling world,
But scanning this broad humanity
There wasn’t a ****** he could see.

He’d scan and swoop from his greater height
When the clouds got into his way at night,
And beam on in to the female kind,
To enter their thoughts, and read each mind.

Then every day he’d return back home
Reporting back where his master roamed,
‘There isn’t a one,’ he said, ‘You’re sure?
You surely can find me one that’s pure.’

‘I scan three hundred and more each night,
And none of their thoughts are pearly white,
For even the ones not quite undone
Have dreams that tell them it might be fun.’

‘I have to say that they sometimes shock
With dirtier minds than the weathercock,
A ****** body is easy to find,
But not one pure with a ****** mind.’

He still flies out in the midnight world
In a fruitless search for a ****** girl,
Pure in body and pure in mind,
But now extinct in our humankind.

He tells his master his search is cursed,
There’s none to find in the universe,
His darkling master is left confused,
‘Perhaps you would like one barely used?’

But no, his master will still insist,
And waits in vain for his ****** tryst,
So that’s why, under a harvest moon,
You may glimpse wings in the month of June.

David Lewis Paget

‘I’m tired, so tired,’ said Jonathon Black,
‘I can hardly stay awake,’
His wife just stared at the back of his head,
Went back to her currant cake.
She’d heard it all a million times
Was bored with the things he’d say,
She wished he’d pack up his things, sometimes
And quietly go away.

But Jonathon sat in his bamboo chair
And stared at the world outside,
He used to be full of energy,
But something inside him died,
He lived in the shadows of tides and scenes
That were conjured behind his eyes,
The throwaway remnants of others dreams
He’d capture in tears and sighs.

He spent the afternoon nodding off
Then woke with a startled cry,
‘You wouldn’t believe what I saw just now,
Right out of a clear blue sky.
A shadow crept from the bushes there
And it killed young Andrew Deems,’
Giselle had tutted and shook her head,
‘Just one of your stupid dreams!’

The woods, a favourite lovers spot
Stretched out from their own back door,
Giselle would go with a basket there
Looking for mushroom spore.
‘I saw you out in the woods today
But nothing is what it seems,’
She turned and snapped at her husband’s back,
‘Just keep me out of your dreams!’

‘It isn’t a question of that,’ he said,
‘I can’t control what I see,
Wherever a person’s thoughts are at
They keep on coming to me.
Even the strangers that walk on past
Have secrets they send in beams,
You’d think that they would be safe from me
But I’m the waker of dreams.

Giselle had wandered off to the woods
With her basket held on high,
While Jonathon found and loaded his gun,
Went after her with a sigh,
He found her there in a shady nook
In a huddle with Andrew Deems,
‘I thought I’d warned you, often enough,
You didn’t believe, it seems!’

He shot the lad as he tried to run
Then dropped the gun to his side,
‘All I could see in his dreams was you,
But now, that dream has died.’
‘And what will you do with me,’ said she
And bit her lip ‘til it bled,
‘I’m tired, so tired,’ said Jonathon Black
Then put the gun to his head.

David Lewis Paget

His wife was due on the midnight plane
That was coming from Beijing,
He got to the airport early so
He wouldn’t miss the thing,
There wasn’t a seat at Wenzhou so
He found that he had to stand,
It’s always tough when you’re sleeping rough
Away, in a foreign land.

He settled down in a corner, set
His back up next to the wall,
Pulled out the pic of his own Mei Ling
In front of a waterfall,
Her eyes smiled into the camera when
He’d taken the snap that day,
But that was before they married,
Now it seemed an age away.

They’d both had to fight her parents when
They saw he was from the west,
They called him a foreign devil, a
Yang wei, and all the rest,
They wanted her wed to a Han, they said,
Mei Ling had answered ‘No!’
She’d made her mind up herself, she said,
And would be his own lӑo pό.

She said she was flying China Air
And that gave him cause for thought,
He knew that their safety record was
The worst in any port,
But he waited patiently by the clock
Til it gave the midnight chime,
Then wandered into reception where
She’d be, most any time.

The Chinese waiting beside him
Milled and jabbered as they stood,
He never could understand a word
But he smiled as if he could,
And then he found they were friendly
Though they nudged each other now,
And some had even approached him with
Their greeting, their Ni Hao.

By half past twelve, there wasn’t a plane
And the people looked upset,
He thought there’d be an announcement,
Someone said, ‘there’s nothing yet.’
At one o’clock there were tears and fears
That the plane would never show,
And then he heard that the plane had ditched
In the waters off Ningbo.

His heart had sunk and he almost cried
But he thought to grieve with grace,
And everyone else was struggling
They were scared of ‘losing face’,
But they all broke down when a man came round
And he said, ‘there’s little hope,’
There wasn’t a single survivor,
Then he cried, he couldn’t cope.

He’d lost the love of his life, Mei Ling
With her beaming almond eyes,
Her jet black hair and her loving stare
But he got a quick surprise,
A man led him to a phone where they
Had called for him in vain,
And from Beijing he heard Mei Ling
Who sobbed, ‘I missed the plane!’

David Lewis Paget

Winter was settling in at the hedges,
Whiting the meadows and hanging off ledges,
Crazing at windows and frosting the willow,
Creeping at ceilings and freezing my pillow,
Outside the woods were embraced in a tangle,
Snow falling steadily, stars were a-spangle.

I felt it time to be wandering steadily
Out where my footsteps had followed hers, readily,
Past where the pathway encircled the wishing well
Holding the pennies we’d tossed for a lovers spell,
She’d walked ahead with a bow in her auburn hair
One yellow ribbon, that’s how I remembered her.

She’d seemed uncertain and wanted to talk to me
I really didn’t, but she said to ‘walk with me’,
Down through the woods where the leaves lay in Autumn,
Yellow and golden, the grounds of Bell Norton,
Once was a convent and practiced religiously
Then we were deep in the woods by a poplar tree.

She turned and spoke of the thing I was fearing,
Took off her ring and the pearl in her earring,
‘I am in love with another,’ she said to me,
‘What of our love?’ then she said, ‘That is dead to me!’
‘You must allow me to love Justin Hanger,’
I felt cold rage and I lashed out in anger.

She fell pole-axed at the foot of a chestnut tree
Never a sign of the life that had once loved me,
Dragged her some distance and into the Folly,
Covered in creepers and mistletoe, holly,
Buried her under a floor that was rotten,
And left her in store so that she’d be forgotten.

Now it was months and I came back to see her
Deep in the winter, with weather so drear,
Opened the flimsy old door of the Folly,
Caught up in creepers and mistletoe, holly,
When from the floor came a sound like a groaning,
Under the boards was a weeping and moaning.

‘This can’t be true,’ as I came in and staggered,
Watched a hand rise through the floor, looking hagard,
Most of the flesh fell away from the bone,
Then the floor heaved and I heard the girl moan,
‘Where is my lover, the one that is true to me,’
‘You must be dead,’ I said, ‘all this is new to me.’

I took the axe that was stood in the corner
Raised it aloft as if I tried to warn her,
Then someone tackled and brought me to ground,
Muttering something, ‘At last she’s been found!’
And under the floor were her human remains,
No moaning or groaning, just my guilty pains.

David Lewis Paget

I was driving along the coastal route,
Looking for somewhere to stay,
A Bed and Board that was cheap would suit
In a nice secluded Bay,
But the weather broke on the seaward side
As the clouds came tumbling in,
So I had to pull to the side of the road
Next to a painted Inn.

The swinging sign said, ‘The Final Rest’
And it creaked as the seawind blew,
With a skull emblazed on the painted crest,
Though rain impeded the view,
And what was left of an ancient wreck
Lay caught on the rocky shore,
Only a matter of yards beyond
The road, and the old Inn door.

I waited until the rain had stopped
Then made my way to the bar,
An ugly crone stood there alone
On her face, a terrible scar,
She leered and said, ‘Would you like a bed,
For the storm’s set in for the night,’
My mouth was dry as I wondered why,
That scar was a terrible sight.

I said that I’d stay for just one night,
Then stood, and couldn’t but stare,
She said, ‘I know what you’re looking at,’
Reached up, and patted her hair,
She ran her finger along the scar
With a wizened, frightful hand,
‘There were some once said I was beautiful,
Oh, the wondrous works of man!’

I dropped my eyes and apologised,
While taking the proffered key,
‘I hadn’t meant to be rude,’ I cried,
‘It’s nothing to do with me!’
‘That’s what they always say,’ she said
While leading me up to my room,
Way up there on the topmost floor,
It was dark, and like a tomb.

The room held a large four poster bed
With a canopy up above,
I shut the door and I sighed, ‘There but
For the grace of the Lord above…’
The wind was rattling round the eaves
It was well set in for the night,
And I lay and mused on the woman’s fate,
What a truly, dreadful sight.

I must have fallen asleep just then
For my soul was so depressed,
I didn’t want to be stranded there
But at least I’d get some rest,
Then two o’clock in the morning I
Awoke, as my heart had raced,
The canopy had been winding down
Was pressing down on my face.

I wriggled out from beneath its hold
And struggled to get my breath,
I now knew what was ‘The Final Rest’
It was nothing less than death,
I watched the canopy creep on down
Til it gripped where I had been,
It was nothing less than revenge on men
In a plan that was obscene!

Then nothing happened for half an hour
While I shuddered beside the bed,
I knew, if I had been lying there
The odds are, I’d be dead,
But then the bed had begun to move
To tilt on its side, real slow,
And then the floor, it had opened  up
To reveal a tank below.

And there the bodies of seven men
Lay in a watery grave,
Suffocated in blissful sleep
By a woman that was depraved,
The man that inflicted that dreadful scar
Had taken her life and soul,
Had turned her into a twisted crone
The Devil had in his hold.

She finally entered the deadly room
And her eyes were dull, and blank,
I jumped on out and I seized her then
And threw her into the tank,
She didn’t struggle, she didn’t cry
She knew it would come to this,
But sank and stared from the water tank
As the floor closed, with a hiss.

Whenever I travel around these days
I always sleep in the car,
It’s not so comfortable, that I grant
But it’s safer now, by far,
I hear that ‘The Final Rest’ has gone,
Developers bought the site,
And built a massive hotel just there,
They call it, ‘The Restful Night’.

David Lewis Paget

My sister Susan had disappeared
At the age of twenty four,
She’d gone on up to the attic room
And she’d locked and barred the door,
We beat, cajoled, and entreated her,
But she never would come out,
I said, ‘We shouldn’t have argued Sue,
I didn’t need to shout.’

My father came with his gravel voice
And demanded ‘Open up!’
He thumped and kicked on the cedar door,
And beat with a metal cup,
But there wasn’t even a whimper
As of somebody inside,
It was like she’d suffered a broken heart
Had crawled in there, and died.

We left her there till the morning,
Thought a night would calm her down,
‘She’ll come out once she is hungry,’
Said my brother, (he’s a clown).
But as the clock struck for dinner time
With not the slightest stir,
My father carried a battering ram
And ran right up the stair.

He stood and battered the cedar door,
He said it gave him pain,
‘I can’t afford to replace it, but,’
Then belted it again,
The door had splintered, the lock fell off
And he burst into the room,
But all that he saw were cobwebs, dust
And an air of deepest gloom.

‘Susan, where can you be,’ he cried,
‘There’s nowhere you can hide,
There isn’t even a window here
So you can’t have got outside,’
His voice rang out through the house and sent
An echo down the stair,
My mother burst into tears to hear
That Susan wasn’t there.

The police came over and climbed the roof,
Dropped into the attic space,
They hunted among the rafters there,
Looked almost every place,
There wasn’t a sign of Susan though
She’d simply disappeared,
‘The same thing happened to Grandma Coe,’
My mother cried, ‘It’s weird!’

‘She locked herself in the attic there
In the fall of forty-eight,
‘They thought that they heard her on the stair
When the hour was getting late,
But never a sign of her came back,
Then her husband, Grandpa died,
We always thought that she must be here
But somehow locked inside.’

We called the local clairvoyant in
And he brought his Tarot pack,
He stared long into his crystal ball
Till we had to call him back,
He chanted into the midnight hour
In a voice both loud and slow,
Till shuffling out of the Attic came
Not Sue, but Grandma Coe!

David Lewis Paget

It was just on the stroke of midnight,
I was going to go to bed,
But I had to pass by Charlie’s room
So I hung back there, instead,
I could hear the rattle of drums that came
From under his bedroom door,
And then the sound of a French ‘Huzzah!’
From a Napoleonic war.

I thought, ‘He’s at it again, he’s got
The Frenchies marching east,
He’s going to Borodino, where
He’s got a chance, at least,
He’s leading the French Grand Armée
As Napoleon did before,
But I couldn’t get in to stop him, as
He’d locked his bedroom door.

I shook my head and I went to bed,
There was no point hanging round,
For Charlie, he’d be up all night
‘Til the Armée went to ground,
By dawn he’d have them dragging back
From the Russian ice and snow,
And wouldn’t be fit to go to school
‘Til he’d had a sleep, you know.

He wasn’t a kid like other kids
He wouldn’t play with a phone,
He didn’t get into computer games
But he spent his time alone.
He didn’t make friends so easily
For he never went out to play,
But stuck his head in a history book
And would read and read all day.

They said he must have been gifted in
Some strange, abnormal way,
He used his imagination for
The games he wanted to play,
His mind reached back to another time
Where the personae were dead,
And brought them back for a second chance
On the counterpane of his bed.

I caught a glimpse of the action once
In a crack through his bedroom door,
A galleon moored in a harbour by
An armed Conquistador,
He saw me there and he slammed the door
And he said, ‘Don’t interfere!
I’m trying to raise the English Fleet
And I can’t if you’re standing there!’

His mother took him to town one day
To see a psychologist,
Who said, ‘He lives in a world of his own,
I think he’s really blessed.
We all grow out of our childish ways
And I think he’ll be the same.’
He thought it was all in Charlie’s head
‘Til the day that ‘Little Boy’ came.

He’d read and read of the second war
For a month until that day,
When I heard the aircraft engines I
Just knew, the ‘Enola Gay’,
I beat and beat upon Charlie’s door,
Broke out in a cold, cold sweat,
But the plane took off, and I grabbed the wife
And we’d still be running yet.

We were out in the road when the roof blew off
With a mighty blast and roar,
And the mushroom cloud was curling up
While we lay, flat out on the floor,
Charlie had gone from our lives for good
With his gift, and his bag of tricks,
Hard to believe that he had the power,
For Charlie was only six!

David Lewis Paget

They lived in a farm on the lower slopes
Of a place called Gresty Hill,
Three sisters, Emily Jane and Hope
And the younger one called Jill,
My father said to avoid those girls
And my mother echoed him,
‘They’re plain and nasty and not for you,
My son, my darling Jim.’

Like everything that’s denied to you
My interest was aroused,
I’d watch them swilling the pigs below
And milking the Jersey cows,
They went barefoot and they slopped through mud,
When they laughed, I heard their cries,
And watched from up on the hill above
Till I caught their laughing eyes.

Then they’d point at me, and they’d strut and flounce
And would shake their tangled hair,
A blonde, brunette and an auburn girl
They would stand below, and stare,
And sometimes, when they were feeling bold
They would hitch their skirts up high,
Put one foot on a water cask
And show me a muddy thigh.

‘Don’t never go down to that Gresty Farm,’
My parents made me swear,
‘For once they get you they’ll use their charm
And will likely keep you there.’
But the girl called Jill had a butter churn
And she made it soft as silk,
And came with Hope to our rustic barn,
Selling the sisters’ milk.

They smiled and giggled when I came out
And they ****** their wares at me,
‘I don’t know whether the folks will want,’
I said, ‘I’ll go and see.’
But my father came and shooed them off,
‘We don’t want the likes of you!
You keep yourselves to your Gresty Farm
And do what you have to do.’

I asked my mother what they had done
And she shed a whispy tear,
‘Some things cannot be undone, my son,
I try not to interfere.’
My father turned to me, stony, grim
Said sleeping dogs should lie,
‘The likes of them are forbidden, Jim,
But you’ll not know the reason why.’

The day came after my father fell
From the tractor, over the hill,
Was crushed, and after the funeral
All of his secrets spilled.
My mother took me aside to say
That my father wasn’t a saint,
‘You know how a cuckoo drops its egg
In another’s nest… Don’t faint!’

‘Two of the three at Gresty Farm
Were his, but I don’t know which,
Their widowed mother would put about
Before they were born, the *****!
It well could be the first and the third,
The second, I couldn’t tell,
All I know is your father made my
Life, like a living hell!’

Jim went down to the Gresty Farm
For the first time in his life,
He lined up three of the Gresty girls
And said, ‘I need me a wife.
I’m told that two of the three of you
Are my sisters, is it true?
I need to know what your mother knows
For I sure can’t marry two.’

Their mother Gail gave a fearsome wail
When confronted by the four,
The daughters said, ‘Well we never knew,
Why didn’t you tell us before?’
‘Emily Jane and Hope were his,
I never was going to tell,
But Jill was William Parson’s girl,
Your father should burn in hell!’

He took Jill back to his hillside farm
And he called his mother out,
‘This is Jill, and her father’s Bill,
I’ve been told that, without doubt.’
Then he said to Jill, ‘Will you marry me?’
She was coy, and answered slow,
‘You’ll have to prove you can carry me,
If you can, you never know!’

David Lewis Paget

The Church Belfry at Catherine Cross
Was known for its ancient bells,
They’d peal on out before Sunday Mass
And wake the monks in their cells,
The bellringers were a hardy crew
And their timing was superb,
But Joe and John, they didn’t get on,
And nor did the Bellman, Herb.

For Herb worked up in the belfry, with
The bells that he thought were his,
He’d tend the stock and the clapper stays
So the clapper wouldn’t miss,
He’d set each rope to the ringer’s height
To a fraction of an inch,
And woe betide if a ringer died,
Or another called in sick.

He’d call on down to the bellringers,
‘Go easy on those ropes,
You wouldn’t want to be stretching them,
They’re after all, the Pope’s!’
But John would glare at his form up there
And call up, between spells,
‘Don’t interfere with our work down here,
It’s we who ring the bells!’

He’d do his best to unsettle Herb
Would leave him in the lurch,
Then try, by ringing the tenor bell
To knock him off his perch,
The bell weighed upwards of three long tons
Would leave John out of breath,
But over time with its endless chime
Herb was going deaf.

Then Herb would leap from the belfry stair
And knock John to the ground,
The bells would ring out of sequence then
And make a terrible sound,
And while they struggled and punched and swore
The villagers would smirk,
‘That’s Herb and John got a punch-up on,
That Herb is a piece of work!’

So John had gone to the Synod, asked
That the Bellman should be sacked,
‘There’s nothing he needs to do up there,
I’m sick of being attacked.’
And so the word was carried to Herb
That their need of him was done,
Gave him a week to collect his things
And then, he must be gone.

His final Mass at Catherine Cross
Herb clambered up in the tower,
He’d show them all in his hour of loss
He’d have John in his power,
He loosened the nut that held the bell
To the headstock, up above,
And as it rang with a mighty clang
He gave it a final shove.

Then John strode into the centre, cursing
Looking up at the bell,
But what he saw would forever haunt him
Like some scene from Hell,
The bell was hurtling down towards him
Herb astride the crown,
His eyes a-gleam with revenge, it seemed
As the mighty bell came down.

Herb is buried at Catherine Cross
Not far from the place he fell,
While John was trapped for three long days
Under the dome of the bell,
It took the arm of a crane to lift
And set John free from his pain,
But from then on it was ‘Crazy John’
For he clambered out insane!

David Lewis Paget

The Georgian Manor in Ripon Town
Had seen far better days,
The chimney pots had fallen down
And the windows, scarred and crazed,
The paint had peeled from the cedar door
And the ivy climbed untamed,
From the days of the aristocracy
The house was re-arranged.

There were flats and a communal kitchen
But no carpets on the floor,
The walls were damp and the paper peeled
In strips, from the old décor,
When Jennifer took an upstairs flat
She shuddered, ‘It won’t be long.’
But things in her life had taken a turn
With everything going wrong.

She lay on the iron poster bed
And she cried herself to sleep,
Ever since her engagement went
All she could do was weep,
The future, bleak and forbidding now
Held nothing but fear and tears,
It yawned ahead in her misery,
An aeon of wasted years.

At night, the gloom would descend, a pall
Would settle upon her room,
She’d lie awake to the mutterings
That seemed to come from the tomb,
The manor had once been bright and gay
With Lords and Earls, and Dames
Plucking at hammered dulcimers
While playing their wooing games.

And standing off in the corner was
A wardrobe, made of teak,
The doors were locked, there wasn’t a key
It was just some old antique,
Or that was what she had thought at first
‘Til her interest fired her mind,
And she levered open the doors one night
To see what there was to find.

She found there what was a treasure trove
Of gowns and hoods and capes,
Of silken skirts with their bustles,
Party masques for their escapades,
Muslin dresses and bodices
That Jennifer gaped to see,
That ladies wore all those years before,
And whalebone corsetry.

She felt a hidden excitement while
Surveying the gorgeous past,
And then an ineffable sadness that
Such grandeur didn’t last,
The woman that wore these party gowns
Was laid in an ancient grave,
Along with her beaus and suitors all,
The clothes alone were saved.

One night she weakened, and tried them on,
They seemed like a perfect fit,
Over the laced up corsets when
She donned a satin slip,
She chose a gown with a turquoise hue
With a bustle of ribbon and lace,
While the gas lamp that had never worked
Lit up, to reflect her face.

Then music wafted under her door
From a dulcimer and lute,
A wistful song from an old spinette
And a Love song from a flute,
She thrilled to enter the passage where
The gas lamps, in a row,
Played their light on the central stair
And the dancing, down below.

She floated to the head of the stair
As her gown trailed on behind,
And wondered as she descended what
Enchantment she would find,
The dancers stopped, and they looked at her
As she joined them on the floor,
And one said, ‘Here is the Faery Queene,
We’d best make fast the door.’

A fine young man in a tailcoat came
And he bent to kiss her hand,
From white cravat to his doeskin boots
He was quickly in command,
He whirled her breathless, into the throng
As the dancers wheeled and spun,
Risen up for this one enchant
That her dressing had begun.

But after one in the morning she
Began to fear and doubt,
The tapers happened to flicker and
The gas lamps all went out,
The dancers started to fade away
To return to where they came,
‘Til only she and the young man stood
In the glare of a single flame.

‘They’re happy now that you brought them back
Though the hours were swiftly spent,
They sleep again in their graves where they
Have aeons to repent.’
‘But what of you, must you join them there,’
As she clung to him the more,
‘Not I,’ he said, ‘for I’m not yet dead,
I live in the flat next door!’

David Lewis Paget

We hadn’t had TV news for days
And the nights were cold and still,
The radio sound was just a haze
Of hash, from over the hill,
There wasn’t a signal for the phone
And the Internet was dead,
‘Do you think it’s just the weather, Bill?’
‘Much more than that,’ I said.

The power went off on the seventh day
I began to feel alarm,
We’d never felt quite so isolated
On our outback farm.
I drove on out to the neighbour’s spread
But they seemed to have gone away,
I thought, ‘That’s funny, it’s not like Fred,
He’s usually baling hay.’

I came back via the Rogers place,
There was nobody around,
The doors to the house were open, but
They seemed to have gone to ground.
Their cars were there but the truck was gone
And the old Toyota Ute,
I called and listened, but not a sound,
I should have been more astute.

I should have packed, and driven away
If I’d known what I know now,
But the pigs and the chickens had to be fed,
And what to do with the cow?
I couldn’t think much outside the farm
The world could fend for itself,
We lived in a tiny world of our own
And thought about nothing else.

We lit the paraffin lamps at night,
‘It’s lucky we kept them, Bill.’
I said, ‘You’re right,’ and stood on the porch,
And watched the glow on the hill.
We’d had three days of never a breeze
Like the lull before a storm,
Though the clouds glowed red in the sky at night
In shapes that were ripped and torn.

A rumble began the thirteenth day
Like a thundering from afar,
And Jacqueline turned to me to say,
‘Stop leaving the door ajar!’
She then collapsed, and covered her ears
And bent down low in her chair,
I saw that her face was smeared with tears
And all I could do was stare.

‘You know that I love you, Jacqueline,
Whatever may come to pass,
I love you more than the day before,
I just want to tell you, lass.’
It started raining at just on dusk,
Came down, and started to pour,
It raised a mist, and started to hiss
In the barley stooks by the door.

The lightning started at four a.m.
We hadn’t been able to sleep,
The sky ablaze through a purple haze
I could hear my woman weep.
I wiped the dust off the .22
That I’d kept there, under the stairs,
Loaded a fresh new magazine
And silently said my prayers.

The cow was dead in the morning, lay
Quite burned, and covered in blood,
And all the chickens were strewn about
Quite dead, they lay in the mud,
‘What does it mean,’ said Jacqueline
As she stared through the window pane,
‘I don’t want to be too hasty, love,
But I think it was acid rain.’

‘There’s nobody left but us,’ she said,
Be honest and tell me true!’
‘I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but
There’s something we need to do.
Pack up our clothes, and all the food,
We’d better be heading West,
If Sydney’s gone, a hydrogen bomb,
Then Melbourne would have been next.’

We’re headed on out to who knows where
And leaving the rain behind,
I hope that the cloud won’t follow us there
Though we’ll be travelling blind.
The .22 is behind the seat
In case we have need of it,
I pray to God that we’ll have it beat,
But Jacqueline’s just been sick!

David Lewis Paget

Nadine was naïve when she came to me,
So innocent, fresh and sublime,
I found that I had to pinch myself
When she told me she was mine.
She was barely out of her teens back then
While I was over the hill,
She hadn’t a toe in the water then,
But I had been through the mill.

Her gentle face was a study in grace
And her eyes had sparkled blue,
Her hair like a field of waving corn
And her lips had glistened dew,
Her ******* were fresh, pushed under her dress
And her hips a promised world,
I’d watch her sway as she’d drift my way
This seductive, sensuous girl.

I’d lie on the bed after making love
And I’d watch her rise and move,
She’d pose for me in her poetry
Like a picture, hung in the Louvre.
She was never ashamed of her body then
Though she lent it just to me,
The rest of the world was missing out,
It was pure idolatry.

I’d take her walking to see the sites
Where culture lurked in the gloom,
And art then captured her simple heart
As we’d go from room to room,
Rubens, Goya and Cabanel,
Titian, Goya, Courbet,
She said, ‘I want to be seen like that,
Preserved in a youthful way.’

We met the sculptor, Matthias Krohn
At a gallery in Berlin,
His mouth fell open to see Nadine
With her pale and perfect skin.
‘You have a goddess, my friend,’ he said,
‘I must capture her in stone!’
I said, ‘Can I come along and watch?’
‘I must work with her alone.’

I’d drop Nadine at his studio
Each day, and she’d stay ‘til four,
I’d ask her how it was going, and
She’d shrug, wouldn’t tell me more.
‘The sculpture’s facing away from me
I won’t see it ‘til it’s done.’
I could tell by the downcast look of her
That it wasn’t really fun.

‘It’s cold, it gets very cold in there,’
She said, when a month had gone
And that was the first time that I knew
She was posed, no clothing on.
‘I thought he would drape your figure there,
In something filmy, like lawn,
‘I told him I wanted the world to see me
Naked as I was born.’

The months went on, there was something wrong
The sparkle had gone from her eye,
The hair that had been like waving corn
Was now just brittle and dry,
Her lips were pursed in a moody line,
No longer glistened with dew,
I said, ‘Am I doing something wrong…’
‘It’s nothing to do with you!’

I went on the final day with her,
Matthias ushered us in,
‘You’ve come for my greatest masterpiece,’
But all I could see was sin.
The eyes were cynical, looking down,
The lips were curled in contempt,
The ******* were pert like a blatant flirt
Who basked in her element.

I took one look at the parted legs
And reached for my girl, Nadine,
The tears were streaming along her cheeks,
‘You’ve made me appear unclean!’
Matthias shrugged as she rushed on out,
‘It’s true to the girl I saw.’
‘Your evil eyes must have told you lies,
You’ve turned Nadine to a *****!’

She never came back to our home again,
She wandered the streets in shame,
I tried to find her, to track her down
But I heard she was on the game.
I saw her last, get into a car,
Her lips were curled in contempt,
Her hair was brittle, like faded straw
But she looked in her element!

David Lewis Paget

It was not a salubrious neighborhood
As the townsfolk there would tell,
But you often found a gem of a pearl
In an ugly oyster shell,
And Derek thought that he’d found his pearl
In those mean and dismal streets,
A girl by the name of Jennifer Searle
Who would make his life complete.

He’d met her at a charity ball
On a short term holiday,
From where she sat, at the end of the hall
She’d taken his breath away,
Her eyes were such a delicate blue
And they held him in their stare,
He was like her prize, and hypnotised
As he stumbled to her there.

And she bade him sit beside her then
And she let him hold her hand,
And she hushed him when he tried to say
What he didn’t understand,
Her smile was brittle, her hand was cool
And her skin as white as snow,
Her form was frail, but he felt her nails
Dig in, as he rose to go.

And a woman came to claim her then
Who dismissed him out of hand,
They waited until he’d turned to go
In a way that was pre-planned,
The woman gave him a printed card
With the girl’s address at home,
And scribbled there, ‘you may call on me
Just once, if you come alone.’

So he walked the damp and dismal street
And his heart began to sing,
He knew one call would be enough,
He would give her everything,
He found her door in a portico
With its number shaped in lead,
And rapped the brass of the knocker there
With its atavistic head.

Then the door swung slowly open and
He was standing in the hall,
Following tamely where she led,
The woman he’d met at the ball,
Jennifer sat at a table and
She smiled as he wandered in,
He stood and stared at her wheelchair
And his look was questioning.

‘You get but a single chance with me
That’s all that I ever give,
I’ve seen the lies in a hundred eyes
So rather than lie, just leave.
My legs have been useless now for years
But I’m whole, and full of love,
If you’d like to take a chance with me
Speak now, for I’ve grieved enough.’

‘I fell in love with your eyes,’ he said
‘From the other side of the hall,
I didn’t know that you couldn’t walk
And it doesn’t matter at all.
I wanted to offer you everything
If you’ll have me, well and good…’
Then Jennifer blinked back tears, as she
Reached out for him, and stood.

David Lewis Paget

By a stream of running water,
Underneath a moonless sky,
Like a nightmare of a slaughter
The blood-spattered train goes by.
Where the rails have long been rusted
All along the valley plain,
There the train, so blood encrusted
Will repeat its run again.

I can hear the rails humming
To the rhythm of its wheels,
As the train, it keeps on coming,
As the driver’s mind, it reels,
And he stares out through the darkness
With each glaring, bloodshot eye,
He will have to face the horror
When he stops the train, or die.

There’s a skull smashed on the boiler,
There’s an arm caught on a ledge,
There is blood and guts and gore all spattered,
On the front, and wedged,
When the train ploughed through the gangers who
Were working on the track,
Then their blood sprayed through his cabin
And he didn’t dare look back.

Then the fireman had to ***** as
Their blood sprayed in his face,
But he heaped the coals upon it just
To keep their frantic pace,
And now both their eyes are crazy at
The slaughter they have done,
They are bound for hell, not heaven
On this final ghostly run.

It’s been sixty seven years now since
That train raced down that track,
And those seven men were slaughtered,
But they keep on coming back,
By a stream of running water,
Underneath a moonless sky,
Like a nightmare of a slaughter
The blood-spattered train goes by.

David Lewis Paget

‘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 sky was dark, it was overcast
When the hearse rolled into town,
The people stopped in its passing,
And stood, with their eyes cast down,
Four black, high stepping, friesian mares
Stepped proud, ahead of the hearse,
While a man was following close behind
But sat on his horse, reversed.

His wrists were bound with a length of twine
Were tethered behind his back,
His eyes were well blindfolded,
Under his black top hat,
His leather boots had glistened and shone
And they rode right up to the knee,
There was something about his stately mien
That said, ‘Aristocracy’.

The horses were decked with ostrich plumes
Fine harness and plaited tails,
The coach shellacked in a shiny black
And fitted with silver rails,
The coffin lay on a satin tray
In the hearse, was covered in lace,
Inscribed with scrolls from the honour rolls
Of a noble house, disgraced.

And far at the rear of the slow cortege
Was a line of women in black,
Carrying jewellery fashioned in jet
As black as the coach shellac.
There wasn’t a tear amongst them all
Nor a smile for the ruined man,
The blindfold merciful, like a pall
In front of his ruined clan.

The hearse rolled into the cemetery
And stopped by the gallows tree,
A footman took off his blindfold then,
‘I hope that’s not meant for me!’
They dragged the coffin out of the hearse
And the man looked once, then twice,
‘I’m not your common old peasant, sir,
I’m the Lord of Mecklen Weiss.’

They dragged him ****** off his horse
And lifted the coffin lid,
‘You’re the Lord of six square feet of earth,
And the Lord of all you did!’
They ****** him into the coffin then
Encased his struggling form,
‘He’ll have some time to consider now
It were best he’d never been born!’

They lowered the coffin into the ground
To the sound of shrieks and cries,
But not one woman who watched it fall
Had a need to dry her eyes.
They say that some heard muffled cries
At that grave for a week or more,
But then, the peasantry always lies
For they hold the Lords in awe.

David Lewis Paget

We lived in a house a cleric built
In fifteen sixty-three,
Deep in a copse of Roman Elms
A grand and mighty tree,
The place was Tudor, half timbered,
And it creaked in every storm,
The wind was rattling through the eaves
Before we both were born.

We saw it up in the window of
The Realtor, going cheap,
It needed some TLC because
Its look would make you weep,
It badly needed a paint job and
Some timbers plugged with tar,
The years of rot had disfigured it,
‘Are you interested?’ ‘We are!’

Dead leaves had cluttered the downstairs rooms
And damp had swelled the floor,
The leadlight windows were dark with gloom
There were rats down in the store,
We worked and slaved on it, Jill and I,
Till it soon became a home,
Nestling in a hollow that
The locals called a combe.

I’d lie awake in the poster bed
That had been since Cromwell’s day,
The beams and curtains were overhead
And the wind would make them sway,
While Jill slept soundly, I still could hear
The wind sough through the trees,
Come rattling up to the shutters and
Slip gently past the eaves.

But then some nights, I’d hear some muttering
Down there by the elms,
Like ghosts of soldiers, loud and stuttering
Underneath their helms,
And then I’d hear the sound of marching
To a Roman beat,
There wasn’t even a pavement but
It sounded like a street.

A street that clattered with cobblestones
To the sound of chariot wheels,
I’d stare on out from the window-sill
To see what night reveals,
But nothing moved in the shady wood
To make those strangest sounds,
I searched and searched in the daylight, through
Those ancient wooded grounds.

Then one day digging a garden patch
I came across a stone,
That held a funny inscription on
The face, that smacked of Rome,
I think it mentioned a Lucius
From Legion Twenty-Nine,
I pried it out of the ground and then
I knew what I would find.

He lay there still in his breastplate
With his helmet and his sword,
His sandals still on his feet and tied
On tight, with a rotted cord,
The skull stared up at me in dismay
As if to say, ‘Who’s there?
You’ve broken into my endless sleep,
Invaded my despair.’

I swiftly covered him over so
That Jill would never see,
A sight to give her the nightmares that
I knew would come to me,
But then I settled his stone upright
That he might rest in bliss,
And that was the end of the mutterings,
From that day until this.

David Lewis Paget

There’s a glow in the sky this morning,
A pink, red-tinted glow,
But what will I do with the day to come,
I really wouldn’t know,
You left on your final journey
When the night was still at last,
And everything that we knew and loved
Has now become the past.

I woke to the timbers creaking in
Our old house by the lake,
All else, a deafening silence
When you should have been awake.
I turned to you in our marriage bed
And I said, ‘I’m feeling old!’
But you lay still in the morning chill
And God, but your hands were cold!

What will I tell the children?
What will I tell our friends?
You left with never a word for me
Or a chance to make amends.
I didn’t think that the day would come
When you’d turn, and leave me blind,
But I awoke to the morning glow
And you’d left me far behind.

What will I do with the days ahead
As your figure fades from view,
With all the memories gone at last
Of the years that I spent with you?
I can’t imagine a single day
When I’ll never hear you speak,
As I kiss your lips and your fingertips
And my tears fall on your cheek.

David Lewis Paget

I’d not seen them out in the open,
They grew in the alleys and lanes,
A purple flower with a sort of power
In the scent from its pores and veins,
I asked Romana the name of it
But she shuddered and turned away,
‘It’s a type of bloom called Purple Doom,
Or that’s what the gypsies say.’

The scent was sickly and sweet out there
I admit, it went to my head,
Romana came to the caravan
And made crazy love in bed.
The scent was an aphrodisiac
That drove normal men insane,
Our clothes were dropped and we couldn’t stop
Till we cried aloud in pain.

The aftermath was a migraine head
That we both endured that night,
And when we woke, she tried to choke me,
All we could do was fight.
At last, we came back down to earth
And surveyed the shattered room,
Romana said that we could be dead
From the scent of that Purple Doom.

I beat the weeds round the caravan,
I poked and prodded and pried,
Found Purple Doom, there in the gloom
So its scent was sweet inside.
I tore the clump right out by the roots
But I cut my hand, it bled,
I burnt the flower, curtailed its power
But with poison in my head.

I don’t remember the next few days
But I almost passed away,
I seemed to be wandering in the dark
Where the sky was always grey,
A castle rose in a fallow field
And I tried to cross the moat,
I called Romana ‘Lady Gay’
And she said, ‘Just stay afloat!’

But flowers assailed on every side
They were purple, pink and red,
Leaning in with their tendrils, seemed
To sip the blood I bled.
A gypsy shook me awake one day
And I slowly came around,
‘Don’t go bringing your caravan
And camping on gypsy ground!’

He’d gripped Romana by the hair
And tried to drag her away,
But she let loose with a gypsy curse
And he turned and fled that day.
We towed away the caravan,
And avoid all lanes and gloom,
But she retains a potpourri to
Make love with that Purple Doom.

David Lewis Paget

The brothers Carmody, Jim and John
Were hooked on the keyboard wars,
While growing up, they’d never got on
It was always, ‘Mine, not yours!’
Jim would destroy his brother’s bed
John was more subtle than that,
He’d battery acid his brother’s clothes,
Burn holes in his favourite hat.

They lived just barely a mile apart
When they both left home for good,
If one ran into the other, then
They’d part in a surly mood,
So each had opened a Facebook page
To put the other one down,
Where Jim said, ‘You can’t control your rage!’
And John said Jim was a clown.

They both got married, their wives joined in
To this internecine war,
‘I hear your Betty’s seen round the town
On a bicycle built for four!’
‘Your Jillian picked up the second prize
When she won a date with you,
The ugliest guy in the neighbourhood
And that was the third prize, too.’

Jim sprayed bleach on his brother’s lawn,
John was as sly as a fox,
One night he crept to his brother’s place
Set fire to his letterbox.
The knives were out, there were no holds barred
‘Til the night of the power blackout,
They each paused over the enter key
With a message to chill them out.

‘I’m ready to bomb your citadel,
And nobody will survive!’
‘My crew is coming to do for you,
You’ll never get out alive!’
They hit the keys as the power went out
The messages couldn’t be traced,
They’d flown unguided from each P.C.
And travelled in cyberspace.

Three hundred years they would float adrift
The Carmody boys, long dead,
With thirteen generations of theirs
Not knowing what each one said.
Their words, unscrambled in outer space
Would alight on an alien shore,
Where the native Rogons got what they wished,
An excuse for planetary war!

‘They’re coming to bomb our Citadel,’
Said the Chief of the Rogons, Vork,
‘We’d better send out our nuclear fleet,
This Earth is sparring for war!’
The fleet set out on their ten year hike
On their mission through hyperspace,
The Orkon Fleet was heading on back,
They’d been to the very same place!

‘They sent a message to us as well,
Were sending a crew to attack,
They said we wouldn’t get out alive,
We couldn’t put up with that!
We blasted Earth to a thousand bits
That are floating out by the stars,
They’ll never be threatening us again…
Come on, we’ll race you to Mars!’

David Lewis Paget

‘We’re floating up with the Angels,’
Said the girl in the pale green dress,
She’d voiced the phrase in German
For the girl had hailed from Hesse,
‘I never have dreamt of a night like this,
We soar like the gods of old,’
Then they came and shut all the windows,
For the night was growing cold.

There wasn’t a shake or a shudder
From the platform in the sky,
The waters of the Atlantic streamed
Below, but they were dry,
A headwind slowed their progress
And a storm was coming on,
The flickers of distant lightning lit
The path that they flew along.

The following day, the coast appeared
But the rain set in the more,
Rather than land, the captain took them
Over the Jersey shore,
The weather was bad at Lakehurst, so
They whiled away the hours,
Floating up there above the clouds
And the steady springtime showers.

They finally dropped the mooring lines
As the crew stood by below,
When a sudden flash was seen up aft
And a roar began to grow,
The ship was lit like a candlestick
As the gas and the fabric scorched,
While a flame enveloped the girl in green
And lit her up like a torch.

The frame crashed down on the gondola
And all you could hear were cries,
It was almost as if the gods had screamed:
‘How dare you enter our skies?’
They say that St. Elmo’s Fire was seen
By the watchers, down on the ground,
But there wasn’t a trace of the girl in green
When the Hindenberg went down.

David Lewis Paget

The life and the soul of the party
He was always cracking jokes,
Ever so hale and hearty
When he hung with other blokes.
We all thought he had a funny name,
Have you heard of Astrakanz?
Neither had we, but joked that he
Had an uncle, Cola Cans.

We didn’t know where he came from
He was mute when we asked him that,
Somebody said a planet which
Had been known as Astrakat,
All that he said was, ‘What of you,
Have you read Omar Khayyam?’
When we said no, he said, ‘I know
Exactly who I am.’

He came across as a mystery
But he made it sound like fun,
And though he often was wistful, he
Would carry an x-ray gun.
He said that he used it only
For looking for kidney stones,
And sometimes checking for aliens,
For aliens had no bones.

He seemed a favourite with our wives
Who said that he was well hung,
Then somebody said that he should be,
From a maple tree, or gum.
When he passed the cake at parties
He would say, ‘from Astrakanz,
This is the only cake you’ll get
Not touched by human hands.’

And then one night at a Barbecue
There had been a Moon eclipse,
When out of the sky from nowhere
Came a couple of alien ships.
He said, ‘Well fellas, I have to go
Now they’ve come for me, my fans,’
Then waving, as he clambered aboard,
‘All the best, from Astrakanz!’

David Lewis Paget

At Tintern Abbey I set my bait
To fish in the River Wye,
I’d only been an hour, I swear
When the girl came floating by,
Her dress spread out, a fine brocade
And some lace about her hair,
I almost drowned when I reeled her in
And fell in the river there.

I pulled her up on the river bank
And she lay, and softly sighed,
I felt a strange relief, and thanked
The Lord, I thought she’d died.
But her eyelids gave a flutter then
And she looked at me apace,
‘Would you be one of the Abbot’s men?
There’s no mark upon your face.’

‘I only came to fish,’ I said,
‘And I like what I have caught.’
The look she gave me made me blush
For it set my jest at naught.
‘The Abbot Gilbert lies within
By his candle, book and prayer,
The pestilence has found his sin
For he knows, he’s dying there.’

I thought her speech was quaint and old
Like an echo, lost in time,
I thought, ‘I’ve never seen one so fair,
If only she was mine!’
But she sat, and moved away from me
And she said, ‘You mustn’t touch,
For death has stained this fine country,
It may have you in its clutch.’

‘But I only came to fish,’ I said,
And, ‘there’s nothing wrong with me;
Yet you float down the River Wye
And will end up in the sea.’
‘I chose the cleansing waters so
To avoid the pestilence,
The dead lie in the fields about
And it spares no eminence.’

‘My husband, Guy Fitzherbert bleeds
In the Abbey’s ante-room,
His pilgrimage denied his needs
And the Lord will take him soon.’
I stared at Tintern Abbey’s shell
Standing gaunt against the sky,
‘You must be catching a fever,
We must go and get you dry.’

‘I needs must be on my way again,
Good sir, I wish you well,
But leave this place if you’d rather live
Than enter the gates of Hell.’
My mind caught at some thing she said
And a thought, then so sublime,
I asked the girl, ‘What year is this…?’
‘Thirteen forty-nine!’

David Lewis Paget

I well remember the Hermit who
Lived up in the public park,
He never ventured out of his cave
Til the sky and the fields were dark.
He was, ‘…the only Neanderthal
That survived the coming of Man!
Don’t get too near or you’ll rouse his fear
And he’ll chop off both your hands!’

The cave was deep and mysterious,
It hadn’t been there for long,
The entrance had been uncovered by
The blast of a German bomb,
As kids we’d run in the daylight sun
Right up to the entrance there,
And scream ‘Hello!’ in a long echo
When the other kids would ‘Dare.’

Then deep within came a rumbling
Like an Ogre, clearing its throat,
In seconds then we were tumbling
And I tore my best blue coat.
Just once we saw him out of the cave
With a beard, down to his waist,
Shaking his fist and grumbling
So we screamed, took off in haste.

The years went by and I asked my Dad,
‘Just who was that Hermit guy?
The one that you used to scare us with
In the public park, near Rye.’
He pursed his lips and his face was grim
‘Aye, that was a tale, my son,
Back in the war, a soldier there
And a ****** great Ack-ack gun!’

The Germans used to come every night
And the guns would open up,
With searchlights all criss-crossing the sky
We’d get no sleep or sup,
The guns would go, ‘Ack-ack, Ack-ack,’
Which is how they got their name,
The Home Guard took it in turns to shoot
Each time that the bombers came.’

‘Well Martin Shaw was an older man
And he shot a Heinkel down,
He stood and watched as it burst in flames
Then dived, and hit the ground.
But then a Dornier dropped a bomb
And it hit beside the gun,
It blew a hole in a cave below
Surprising everyone.’

‘The gun fell into the cave below
And so did Martin Shaw,
We said, ‘That’s it, poor Martin’s gone,
We won’t see him no more!’
But he survived in the cave below
And refused to come on out,
So when they were trying to rescue him
They were looking up the spout.’

‘The first one trying to come in here
Is going to lose his head!’
Martin screamed at the rescuers,
‘Come in, and you’ll be dead!’
He fired a couple of Ack-ack shells
To underline his case,
So they all backed off, and went to tea
And left the gun in place.’

‘The years went by and he stayed in there
Long after the war was done,
They knew that he didn’t have any more
Shells, for the Ack-ack gun,
So he’d only walk abroad at night
Catch rabbits and steal his veg,
They said he suffered from shell-shock
And was pretty near to the edge.’

My father had almost had me there
‘Til I saw his sneaky grin,
‘You’ve had me on again,’ I said,
‘You really suckered me in!’
He laughed, ‘I haven’t the faintest who
He was, but just a loon,
But there, that’s something to tell your kids
On a Sunday afternoon.’

David Lewis Paget

We lived on a tiny spit of land
That they called the Harkness Light,
It sat on a reef, a mile of sand
And it beamed out through the night,
There was just myself, and my darling wife
By the name of Jennifer,
But when I went up to tend the light,
He was below, with her.

I was supposed to be on my own
But he brought the cutter out,
Every time that they feared a storm
He’d come, and put her about,
Tie her up to the wooden dock
When the tide was on the rise,
And burst on in to our tiny room
With a wild look in his eyes.

‘I’ve come to be of assistance, Joe,
There’s a storm front coming in,’
‘I think we can manage it ourselves,’
I’d say, with a touch of vim,
I never could trust those smiling eyes
Or that set of perfect teeth,
He made me think of a circling shark
Like the ones beyond the reef.

But Jennifer always welcomed him
With one of her gracious smiles,
She hadn’t a frown for anyone
And her smile would beam for miles,
‘It’s lovely to have some company,’
She’d say, when a storm was nigh,
And cold, black angry thunderheads
Had filled the darkening sky.

He wasn’t of any assistance, he
Would sit and drink our tea,
While I would climb to the light alone
He wasn’t much use to me,
I began to suspect his visits there
Were more to do with her,
I knew that he was attracted to
My darling Jennifer.

It came to a head one night when I
Came down to find them hushed,
With Jennifer disarranged, and when
I looked at her, she blushed,
I knew that I had to do something
But what? It chilled my blood,
That one of these days she’d slip away
And I’d lose my wife for good.

I said, ‘I need your assistance, Chris,
To change the carbon arc,
We’d better get up on top or else
All they will see is dark.
I followed him up the winding stair
But carried a bar of lead,
And when we arrived at the topmost stair
I hit him, over the head.

It doesn’t take much to truss a man
When he’s out, stone cold for the count,
I tied his back to the outer rail
And facing the light, its mount,
And then I plastered his eyelids wide
So he couldn’t take his sight
Away from that glaring carbon arc
That made up the Harkness Light.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Chris
Had screamed on his coming to,
I said, ‘I’m protecting Jennifer
From the leery eyes of you.
You shouldn’t come on to another’s wife
For you know, it’s just not right,
I’ll do whatever I have to do
If it makes you see the light.’

That light burnt into his very brain
As he cursed, and cried, and swore,
His eyes could never survive the pain
Of a million candle power,
I went below and I said to her
‘Go up and set him free,
You’ll have to gentle him down the stair,
I don’t think he can see.’

It seems that I bet on a loser
For she left me anyway,
‘How could you be so cruel,’ she said,
As she left, the following day,
I heard they’re living together now
But I’m comforted at night,
That when she strips off her clothes for him
All he sees is the Harkness Light.

David Lewis Paget

She thought that she woke in the morning
To a world that was filled with dread,
Though nothing was changed, or rearranged
Her lover was surely dead.
He’d gone to drive in a shady lane
And said he’d be back by three,
A phone call brought her a wealth of pain,
His car crashed into a tree.

And all the lights in the world went out
For even the sun was dim,
Her love was grey, for a day away
Her life had revolved round him.
Never again would she see him smile,
Or feel the thrill of his touch,
Or roll and play in the barnyard hay
When she cried and sighed, ‘Too much!’

But there in the darkness of her room
His phantom seemed to appear,
His face showed care as he stroked her hair,
‘You know that I love you, dear.’
Her tears were like a river that flows
As she tossed and turned in the gloom,
‘I never thought you would leave me here
To seek your rest in a tomb.’

And then she heard the jangle of keys
As she woke, and her eyes were wide,
He said, ‘I thought I would let you sleep
While I went out for a ride.’
She leapt on him and she pulled him down
To the warm, soft quilt on the bed,
‘The only ride you can take, is me,
My God! I dreamt you were dead!’

David Lewis Paget

She asked me how she had come to me
On a sunny afternoon,
She couldn’t remember anything,
Her memories had flown.
She looked in awe at the dress she wore
And the sparkles on her shoes,
‘I didn’t have any of these before,
But what have I got to lose?’

I had her in mind for a Faery Queen
Or maybe a party girl,
I hadn’t a plot to fit right then
But thought I’d give her a whirl.
She had such grace and a lovely face
So I thought she’d fit right in,
And later, plenty of colour for
My lepidoptera tin.

She flittered and fluttered about the field
While I got my butterfly net,
She’d probably still be fluttering
If I hadn’t caught her yet.
But that’s how I catch my characters
That I fit in every plot,
I chase them round and I bring them down
Whether they want, or not.

The women are always butterflies,
The men are usually moths,
I struggle to keep the women sweet
But sometimes they are Goths.
As long as they play their part so well
That the reader doesn’t twig,
That all my casts are butterflies,
The small parts and the big.

For villains I use the Death’s Head Moth
For his markings are so grim,
But the innocent girls in chiffon are
The first to let him in,
He’s mean and cunning, and not so sweet
As the ones he seeks to fool,
But I am only the writer, so
Their conflict is my gruel.

I need to go where the sun is bright
And they flutter in the breeze,
To hold my butterfly net upright
And pursue them through the trees.
Then one day soon in the afternoon
I shall write a plot that sings,
And catch me a lepidoptera,
The one with the brightest wings!

David Lewis Paget

Always a bit of a mystery,
She lived in a seaside shack,
Would go to town when the sun was down
The widow of Martin Black.
She always went in her mourning dress
And a veil that covered her face,
‘Do you think she’d date,’ I had asked a mate,
‘You wouldn’t be in the race!’

‘There’s a list of suitors, long as your arm
Just waiting to take her out,
They knew her back on her Daddy’s farm
When Martin wasn’t about,
But he ******* them all with his shiny Porsche
With his black cravat and coat,
And in the bay not a mile away
With his V6 Jet-ski boat.’

‘You tell me she was a good time girl
In love with material things?’
‘She certainly liked the odd gemstone
And her hands were covered with rings.
But that was him, with his taste for gold
That he liked to shower on her,
And parade her down in the glitz of town
In bling, and covered in fur.’

‘And yet, I’ve not seen a single chain
Or a necklace, brooch or ring,
She’s so austere when I’ve noticed her
I’ve not seen anything,
She wears a drape of the blackest crepe
And a veil that hides her eyes,
But pauses there when I stop and stare
As if caught in some surprise.’

‘That isn’t much of a mystery
If you knew the couple, Jack,
You might as well be a twin of him
The fabled Martin Black.
She’d think that his ghost had risen up
If she saw you in the street,
You might just give her a heart attack
If your dress is not discreet.’

I went back home to the mirror, donned
A coat and a black cravat,
And topped it off with a load of bling
And an old black stove-pipe hat,
The type they said that he used to wear
When they roamed abroad at night,
Taking in all the music halls
To dance till the early light.

She saw me there in the street, and screamed
Then rushed at me and attacked,
And cried, ‘you’re not going to spoil my dreams,
You’ll not be coming back!’
Her fists had pounded my solid form
Til she stopped, collapsed and cried,
And babbled out a confession that
For long, she’d kept inside.

The last I heard she was with the police
Who had questioned her all night,
Extracted all of the details of some
Long and drawn out fight,
They took her down to the waterfront
Where the Jet-ski boat was kept,
And then began to rip up the floor
As the widow wailed and wept.

And he was there with a livid scar
Where she’d slashed him in the throat,
Stuffed him under the planks and boards
By his pride and joy, the boat,
I didn’t know he had disappeared
When I’d thought to bring him back,
But all I’d caused was a host of tears
For the Widow of Martin Black.

David Lewis Paget

An angel fell to the earth one day
And lay with a broken wing,
I saw her lying out on the path
And thought I was seeing things.
‘Are you really what I think you are?’
I said, but I saw she cried,
So picked her gently up in my arms,
‘I’d better get you inside.’

Her tears were staining her pale white cheeks,
And weeds were caught in her hair,
The wing was twisted and limp, I saw,
And I couldn’t help but stare.
‘I think I must look a fright,’ she said,
And dabbed away at her tears,
‘I flew straight into a plane, and still,
The engines ring in my ears.’

I laid her down on the couch inside
Stood back, was taking her in,
‘I thought you couldn’t be seen by men,
You’ve set me to wondering!’
Her dress was white, but was stained with mud
From the place she’d lain, by the gate,
And on the wing was a trace of blood
While feathers fell in the grate.

‘We’d best get that in a splint,’ I said,
And busied myself a while,
Tearing a sheet into long white strips
And setting the kettle to boil.
‘I’d take you down to the hospital
But the shock would be hard to gauge,
They’d probably call in the military,
And lock you up in a cage.’

‘I only came to escort you in,’
She said, ‘and now all this fuss.
You should have been walking the street by now,
And due to be hit by a bus!
They’re going to be mad when I get back home,
I’ve botched the eternal clock,
And you’ll live on past the danger zone,
While I’ll end up in the dock.’

An icy shiver ran down my spine
Like someone walked on my grave,
‘You say I was going to die today,
But you were late, so I’m saved!’
‘If you can see me you’re still not safe
Beware of all things on wheels,
They’ll have to revise your life spell now
If a few more years appeals.’

‘I’ll take whatever you’ve got,’ I said,
‘I’m not quite ready to go,
There’s too many books I haven’t read,
And women to, well, you know!’
They must have made a decision then
For the wind blew through in a gust,
Instead of an angel, sitting, there
Was a cloud of Angel Dust.

David Lewis Paget

The Inn sat down in a hollow,
Deep in a grove of trees,
It sat so far from the road, the yard
Was two feet deep in leaves,
It looked to be well deserted,
Except for a single light,
That poured its glow on the porch below
Late on that fateful night.

I’d looked since I found the Grimoire
Sat up on that dusty shelf,
Written in faded longhand
I couldn’t decipher myself,
The ancient scribe in the library
Had helped to decode each line,
And said it spoke of an ancestor
With a similar name to mine.

It mentioned the Seventh Circle Inn
And where it could still be seen,
It lay astray by a country way
Deep in a copse of green,
And Agnes Drue was a name I knew
Though I heard she’d not been found,
After the Mass they held that day
On consecrated ground.

Her coven had raised a spectre
Beside the Inn, in the woods
Near to a marble altar where
An ancient church had stood,
But then it demanded a sacrifice
To give the Devil his due,
And everyone formed a circle then
Apart from my Agnes Drue.

I entered the Inn to find who kept
The Seventh Circle of sin,
I needed to find what happened to
The one who was lost within,
An ancient crone kept the bar in there
Who croaked, ‘I know why you’re here,
You’re far too late for she’s at Hell’s Gate,
Has been, for many a year.’

I thought that I’d find a clue in there
On the fate of Agnes Drue,
And asked the crone was she on her own,
Would she rather there were two?’
A screech came up from the cellar then
Like the wail of a troglodyte,
The crone went down with a worried frown,
‘She only does that at night!’

Then right in the midst of the cellar floor
Was a ******’s wooden chest,
With iron hasps and rusted clasps
And a chain wound round the rest,
I burst it open to shrieks and cries
That seemed to come from within,
And there was the corpse of Agnes Drue
Where the Devil had locked her in.

The staring eyes in her skull had gone
But they seemed to stare the same,
There was no flesh but the woman’s dress
Was torn in a rage of pain,
And held in her frightful bony hand
Was a book that she’d scribbled on,
Deep in the dark of her awful tomb,
‘I knew! One day you’d come!’

David Lewis Paget

The gardens are laid in rows and lines
Laid out like a colourful maze,
The gates are open from eight ‘til nine,
All week, and Saturdays.
But Sundays they open the gates ‘til ten
They are lit by coloured lights,
I like to wander the strange pathways
But prefer to go by night.

I tell my Sally she ought to come
But she never has, ‘til now,
Her head is always stuck in a book
She’s what you might call highbrow.
One Sunday night, she said she’d come
We got to the gates by eight,
The lights were twinkling in the groves
And the Moon had risen late.

We walked by the beds of petunias,
Snapdragons and daffodils,
The heady perfume was rising up
And strange, but it gave me chills.
We took a fork where the wood was dense
With natives, bushes and trees,
But Sally tripped by a eucalypt,
And ended skinning her knees.

We sat on a garden bench nearby
And mentioned how quiet it was,
The pathway there was a yellow brick
Just like the Wizard of Oz.
We thought, ‘We’re the only ones in here,’
By ten, but she couldn’t walk,
I said, ‘We’ll wait ‘til the gardener comes,
We’ll sit on the bench and talk.’

We sat for over an hour out there,
We sat discussing things,
Mother-of-pearl, the state of the world,
The cost of engagement rings.
But then a shadow had passed us by
Behind a hedge and a tree,
And out there popped the head of a man,
‘Are you two looking for me?’

He couldn’t have been but four foot two,
But hidden behind the trees,
His body never came into view
But he had two pointed ears.
I told him Sally had skinned her knees
And she couldn’t walk just then,
He said he’d send for his volunteers,
‘But beware the Pathways Men!’

An hour went by and the lights went out
We began to fear the dark,
Then three young misses in party dress
Danced up from the outside park.
‘We’ve come to carry your lady home,
Follow us if you may,’
Then plucked poor Sally out of my arms,
And danced down a strange pathway.

I don’t know why it escaped my eye,
It hadn’t been there before,
I tried to follow but found myself
Entangled, both foot and claw.
My path was blocked by three strange men
Linked up, to stand in my way,
‘Don’t think to enter the faery glen
Or your woman will waste away.’

I’ve searched the gardens, I’ve searched the grounds
I’ve searched in the nights and days,
I’ve called for Sally a hundred times
And lost myself in the maze.
But late at night there’s an eerie sound
Like someone playing a lute,
Down at the end of some strange pathway
Where they grow forbidden fruit.

David Lewis Paget

You sat in your chair, and read your book,
As often I’ve seen you do,
While each now and then I’d peek a look,
A glance filled with love for you.
The hour was late, but you didn’t stir,
I said I’d be off to bed,
I noticed your look was fixed on your book
So it went right over your head.

I lay awake for an hour or two,
And thought that you might come up,
We’d both had coffee before I came,
I’d made you a second cup,
You may have fallen asleep down there
All cuddled up in your chair,
I cleared my head, and got out of bed,
Thinking to call you there.

I ventured into a darkened lounge
And found that the power had failed,
While lighting flashed through the open blinds,
And thunder above assailed.
But still you sat in your cozy nook
And stared straight down at the page,
Clinging on to your open book
By an old, forgotten sage.

I called you once, and I called you twice
But you didn’t move or stir,
I tried to shake you awake, but you
Were cold in the cool night air.
Your face was pale in the flashing light
Of the lightning bursts outside,
And then the terrible truth came out,
You’d sat in your chair, and died.

I tried so hard to revive you, but
You didn’t allay my fears,
Your eyes were open, but dull and black,
While my own eyes filled with tears.
I laid your open book on the hearth
And tried to preserve the page,
The final one you were looking at
As you left this mortal stage.

And often now I stare at that book
At the final words you read,
As death crept up and it claimed you then
As those words rang in your head:
‘You must let go and come walk with me
To the green fields of the park,
Just take my hand and then leave with me,
Don’t be afraid of the dark.’

David Lewis Paget