1981

This broken year

Waits tinselled, brinked

At held breath

In hard times,

To drain some favoured

Harlot’s drink

And stay death

With coarse rhymes.

 

What principle

This wanton cost

Or short sold

For long lust,

And what price

Your cheap gilt,

And where lost

Lies all trust?

 

Each winking tree

Blinks blind, alone

Across and back

Each barren verse,

Where chrome wheels

Seek warm hearths

As Christ drives

His cold hearse.

 

David Lewis Paget