OFFICE FRIENDSHIPS

The Heartless Girl Loses Her Job - Postcard - 1909 

Eve is madly in love with Hugh

And Hugh is keen on Jim.

Charles is in love with very few

And few are in love with him.

Myra sits typing notes of love

With romantic pianist's fingers,

Dick turns his eyes to the heavens above

Where Fran's divine perfume lingers.

Nicky is rolling eyes and tits

And flaunting her wiggly walk.

Everybody is thrilled to bits

by Clive's suggestive talk.

Sex suppressed will go berserk,

But it keeps us all alive.

It's a wonderful change from wives and work,

And it ends at half past five.

Gavin Ewart

1916-1995

Unless the mood takes me, or I receive requests to the contrary, enough now of levity, back to the serious matter of poetry in September. 

ON THE RHINE

Paddle Steamer 'Rheinland', passing the Loreley Rock.

On, on the vessel steals;

Round go the paddle-wheels,

And now the tourist feels

As he should;

For king-like rolls the Rhine, 

And the scenery's divine,

And the victuals and the wine

Rather good.

From every crag we pass'll

Rise up some hoar old castle;

The hanging fir-groves tassel

Every slope:

And the vine her lithe arm stretches

Over peasants singing catches -

And you'll make no end of sketches,

I should hope.

We've a nun here (called Thérèse),

Two couriers out of place,

One Yankee with a face

Like a ferret's;

And three youths in scarlet caps

Drinking chocolate and schnapps -

A diet which perhaps

Has its merits.

And day again declines;

In shadow sleep the vines,

And the last ray through the pines

Feebly glows,

Then sinks behind yon ridge;

And the usual evening midge

Is settling on the bridge

Of my nose.

And keen's the air and cold,

And the sheep are in the fold,

And Night walks sable-stoled

Through the trees;

And on the silent river

The floating starbeams quiver; -

And now the saints deliver

Us from fleas.

C.S. Calverley

1831-1884

Poet and Wit

C.S. Calverley was the literary father of what has been called the "university school of humour".

KID

Batman, big shot, when you gave the order 

to grow up, then let me loose to wander

leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder

as you liked to say, or ditched me, rather,

in the gutter . . . . well, I turned the corner.

Now I've scotched that 'he was like a father

to me' rumour, sacked it, blown the cover

on that 'he was like an elder brother' 

story, let the cat out on that caper

with the married woman, how you took her 

downtown on expenses in the motor.

Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!

Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover,

I'm not playing ball-boy any longer

Batman, now I've doffed that off-the-shoulder

Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number

for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;

now I'm taller, harder, stronger, older,

Batman, it makes a marvellous picture:

you without a shadow, stewing over

chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,

next to nothing in the walk-in larder,

Punching the palm of your hand all winter,

you baby, now I'm the real boy wonder.

Simon Armitage

1963

Simon Armitage comments:

"It gave me great pleasure taking a big, swanky character like Batman and placing him in a little terraced house in West Yorkshire. See how he liked it. I suppose the poem is about power dynamics: father/son, employer/employee, funny guy/straight man, etc. Bravado fuelled by bitterness is the tone of voice I was hoping to catch."

THE LADY AT THE WELL-SPRING

Auguste Renoir - La Source

He is quite captive to the Lady of the Well-Spring,

Who will rescue him?

Into the French drawing-room the afternoon sun shone

And as the French ladies laughed their white faces

Barred by the balcony shadows seemed to make grimaces.

In a far corner of the room

Sat the English child Joan

As far away as she could get but without exasperation

Only to be freed from the difficulty of conversation.

'Quite captive to the lady of the Well-Spring

Who will rescue him?'

Now I have an excuse to go

Said Joan, and walked out of the window

Down the iron staircase and along the path

And then she began to run through the tall wet grass.

Overhead the hot sun slanting

Fell on Joan as she ran through the field panting,

Faster faster uphill she goes hoping

That as the ground goes steeply sloping

She will find the well-spring. Into a little wood

She runs, the branches catching at her feet draw blood

And there is a sound of piping screaming croaking clacking

As the birds of the wood rise chattering.

And now as she runs is the bicker

Of a stream growing narrower in a trickle

And a splash and a flinging, it is water springing.

Now with her feet in deep moss Joan stands looking

Where on a bank a great white lady is lying

A fair smooth lady whose stomach swelling

Full breasts fine waist and long legs tapering

Are shadowed with grass-green streaks. The lady smiles

Lying naked. The sun stealing

Through the branches, her canopies, glorifies

The beautiful rich fat lady where she lies.

Never before in history

In a place so green and watery

Has lady's flesh and so divine a lady's as this is

With just such an admiring look as Joan's met with.

'Quite captive to the Lady of the Well-Spring?'

What nonsense, it is a thing

French ladies would say

In sophisticated conversation on a warm day.

I do not wish to rescue him, blurts Joan,

The Lady lolls, do you wish to go home?

No, says Joan, I should like to live

Here. Right, says the lady, you are my captive.

The child Joan fully sees the beauty her eye embraces.

Do not think of her as one who loses.

Stevie Smith

1902-71

Poet and Novelist

THE ALL PURPOSE COUNTRY AND WESTERN SELF PITY SONG

Image via shutterstock

He jumped off the box-car

In Eastbourne, the beast born

In him was too hungry to hide;

His neck in grief's grommet,

He groaned through his vomit

At the churn

And the yearn

At the turn of the tide.

He headed him soon

For a sad-lit saloon

In back of the edge of the strand,

Where a man almost ended

Sat down and extended

His speckled,

Blue-knuckled

And cuckolded

Hand.

Cried, The wind broke my marriage in two.

Clean through the bones of it,

Christ how it blew!

I got no tomorrow

And sorrow

Is tough to rescind;

So, forgive me if I should break wind, son,

Forgive me

If I should break wind.

At this the bartender

Addressed the agenda,

A dish-cloth kept dabbing his eye,

Said, Pardon intrusion

Upon your effusion

Of loss but none wooed it

Or rued it

As I.

For after the eve of Yvonne,

My God, how it hurts now the woman has gone!

Heart-sick as a dog,

I roll on like a log

Down the roaring black river

Where once sailed

A swan.

Then the dog on the floor,

Who'd not spoken before,

Growled, Ain't it the truth you guys said?

I may be a son-

Of-a-bitch but that bitch

Was my Sun

And she dumped me,

The bitch did,

For dead.

So three lonely guys in the night and a hound

Drank up, and they headed them out to the Sound,

Threw up, then they threw themselves

In and they

Drowned.

O dee-o-dayee

Odee-o-dayee

Woe-woe-dalaye

Kit Wright

b. 1944

RATATOUILLE

I

Consider,

 please, this dish of ratatouille.

Neither will it invade Afghanistan

or boycott the Olympic Games in a huff.

It likes the paintings of Raoul Dufy,

It feeds the playboy and the working man.

Of wine and sun it cannot get enough. 

It has no enemies, no, not even

Salade Niçoise or phoney recipes,

Not Leonid Brezhnev, no, not Ronald Reagan.

It is the fruits of earth, this ratatouille,

And it has many friends, including me.

Come lovers of ratatouille, and unite!

II

It is a sort of dream, which coincides

With the pacific relaxations called

Preferred Reality. Men who forget

Lovingly chopped up cloves of ail, who scorn 

The job of slicing two good peppers thinly,

Then two large onions and six aubergines -

Those long, impassioned and imperial purples -

Which, with six courgettes you sift with salt

And cover with a plate for one round hour;

Or men who do no care to know about

The eight ripe pommes d'amour their wives have need of,

Preparing ratatouille, who give no thought to

The cup of olive oil that's heated in

their heaviest pan, or onions, fried with garlic

For five observant minutes, before they add

Aubergines, courgettes, peppers, tomatoes;

Or men who give no thought to what their wives

Are thinking as they stand beside their stoves

When seasoning is sprinkled on, before 

A bouquet garni is dropped in - these men

Invade Afghanistan, boycott the Games,

Call off their fixtures and prepare for war.

III

Cook for one hour, and then serve hot or cold.

Eat it, for preference, under the sun,

But, if you are Northern, you may eat

Your ratatouille imagining Provence.

Believe me, it goes well with everything,

As love does, as peace does, as summers do

Or any other season, as a lifetime does.

Acquire then, for yourselves, ingredients;

Prepare this stew of love, and ask for more.

Quick, before it is too late. Bon appétit!

Douglas Dunn

b. 1942

Poet, Academic, Critic

SUN AND FUN

The Hangover

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1861-1904

French Painter, Printer, Draughtsman and Illustrator

Song Of A Night-Club Proprietress

I walked into the night-club in the morning;

There was kummel on the handle of the door.

The ashtrays were unemptied,

The cleaning unattempted,

And a squashed tomato sandwich on the floor.

I pulled aside the thick magenta curtains

- Regency, so Regency, my dear -

And a host of little spiders

Ran a race across the ciders

To a box of baby 'pollies by the beer.

Oh sun upon the summer-going by-pass

Where everything is speeding to the sea,

And wonder beyond wonder

That here where lorries thunder

The sun should ever percolate to me.

When Boris used to call in his Sedanca,

When Teddy took me down to his estate

When my nose excited passion,

When my clothes were in the fashion,

When my beaux were never cross if I was late,

There was sun enough for lazing upon beaches,

There was fun enough for far into the night,

But I'm dying now and done for,

What on earth was all the fun for?

For I'm old and ill and terrified and tight.

John Betjeman

1906-1984

"Poet and Hack"

I have decided to lighten the tone of my August Selection.

There will be more Light Verse during the Holiday Month.

From WHAT THE LIGHT TEACHES

Language is the house with lamplight in its windows,

visible across fields. Approaching, you can hear

music; closer, smell

soup, bay leaves, bread - a meal for anyone

who has only his tongue left.

It's a country; home, family;

abandoned, burned down; whole lines dead, unmarried.

For those who can't read their way in the streets,

or in the gestures and faces of strangers,

language is the house to run to;

in wild nights, chased by dogs and other sounds,

when you've been lost a long time,

when you have no other place.

There are nights in the forest of words

when I panic, every step into thicker darkness,

the only way out to write myself into a clearing,

which is silence.

Nights in the forest of words

when I'm afraid we won't hear each other

over clattering branches, over

both our voices calling.

In winter, in the hour

when the sun runs liquid then freezes,

caught in the mantilla of empty trees;

when my heart listens

through the cold stethoscope of fear,

your voice in my head reminds me

what the light teaches.

Slowly you translate fear into love,

the way the moon's blood is the sea.

Anne Michaels

Canadian Poet and Novelist

b. 1958