He was wearing a coloured waistcoat,
All covered in Moons and stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,
I saw him first in the marketplace
Hid under his pointy hat,
With ribbons and whorls, and pictures of girls
Pinned over the place he sat.

And she was there at his feet that day
In a dress like a gypsy curse,
Her hair was red, and I’ve always said
She was one with the universe.
If ever love had bitten my hand
Tearing the flesh from the bone,
Then I’d have bled like a river, red
While dragging the girl back home.

But there on the table between them
The tickets were piled so high,
And each one said, ‘would you rather dead,
Or up for a place in the sky?’
It looked like a planetary super mart
With pebbles from outer space,
And there I saw an astrology chart
With a sketch reflecting my face.

I’d swear that the gypsy scowled at me
As the Moon Man tapped with his wand,
A sense of dread sweeping over my head
Put me in the sea of despond,
‘You know you have to get out of here,’
He whispered, the Man from Mars,
‘They’re coming to sweep you away this year,
Along with your rusty cars.’

The girl threw open her gypsy dress
The end would play on her screen,
The earth had gone where it once had shone,
It looked like a nightmare scene.
For bits of earth were floating apart
And space glowed green in the night,
While only the Moon still lit up the room
Where once there had been delight.

‘Pick up your ticket for who knows where,’
He said, to lighten the gloom,
The gypsy curse had been getting worse
Since I knew the earth was a tomb.
I thanked them both, then I turned away
As they faded into the stars,
With planets and things, and Saturn with rings,
And one glowing red like Mars,

David Lewis Paget