The Man in the Chinese Moon

Both Zhang and Tao, and Wang and Chen
They stare at the Chinese moon,
For the fifteenth day of the eighth month
They’ve waited and prayed at noon,
They’ve thought of the woman whose name is known
And written in script and rune,
They ponder her beauty and sinuous shape
As they stare at the round, full moon.

While on some hill, four girls sit still,
Their eyes raised clear to the sky,
They sigh and dream at a cold moonbeam
As they flush, turn red, and cry,
The book could tell them their future loves
But the book is held on high,
And even the children that wait to be born
Are written in ink that’s dry.

The man in the Chinese Moon, Yue Lao,
Is known to them, every one,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Twenty Years Down - (The Beatles)

All you left were your plastic pieces
Cloaked in covers of light and sound,
Whatever happened to spill our leases,
Wreck our passage and check our treaties
Twenty years down?

Often I’ve thought of the way you made it
Poked your tongues at the hand-me-downs,
Sang your songs of the maid, and laid it
Track on track, and the way you played it
Close to the ground.

And we all laughed at your small perfection
Simple lads in a world of wine,
We caught the spell of your sweet confections,
Song on song of your funny mentions
Of you, of me and mine.

The world was well that you had your way in,
Nobody hurt, or suffered or lost,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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If You Die

If you die, I shall smash all the windows,
And I’ll burn all the pictures of you,
I shall kick down the doors
And I’ll tear up the floors
If you die...
If you dare...
If you do!
And you’ll never be safe in the hurt and the hate
Though you lie and stare sightlessly back,
For I’ll batter your face to destroy any grace
You’ve preserved...
For the life that you lack!

Then I’ll claw at your arms and your fingers
So they’ll never hold anyone new,
And I’ll mark both your thighs
In the light of your lies
If you die...
If you dare...
If you do!

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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What's in a Name?

My friend, Olly Dee, is a funny old card,
He could have been so many things,
A builder, an architect, surgeon, a cop,
A soldier, a pilot with wings;
In fact, he did nothing at all with his life,
Not one little thing did he do,
He spent all his time meditating at large,
And blaming his mother, at Loo.

Someone once said: - 'What's in a name? '
It's simply a patent disguise -
But Oll has a brother, who's simply a Fred,
Who just won the Nobel Prize.
One time, long ago, Olly filled out a form
To prove that he really was there,
A letter came, postmarked the palace at dawn
To say that they'd made him a 'Sir'.

He never could face writing in for a job,
Or sitting his licence to drive,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Yggdrasil

The poet sat in the garden house
Under a hawthorn tree,
And stared at the men in helmets who
Had just come up from the sea.

He gathered his words about him
Like a shield in the Land of Rhyme,
The 'glow in the red-raw evening sky'
He left for another time.

He watched as they burned his orchard,
Put his imagery to the sword,
Then wandered back to their surly ships
In the Bay of Bleak Discord.

The heron sat in the estuary,
The raven sat on the shore,
The poet threw up a stanza there
That ends with - 'Nevermore! '

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Tallyn Tor

‘I’m only the flotsam, jetsam drift
Cast up on your bars and beaches,
The glittering shift that you can’t resist
When viewed from your northern reaches,
I didn’t come down in a thunderstorm
Or a blast from your heaven’s lightning,
But cast ashore from the devil’s maw
As the jaws of the storm were tightening.’

‘You watched from the walls of Tallyn Tor
My stars and clouds surround me,
The smoke and drift of an ancient shift
That will always whirlwind round me.
Not even the peace of a lonely beach
Could trouble the storm that caught me
For I sink or swim in the storm within,
Not the eye of the storm that brought me.’

‘Deep in the halls of Tallyn Tor
Your hand was the hand to greet me,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Short Shrift

‘I’ve failed! ’ How many times have sons
And fathers’ fathers echoed me?
‘I’ve failed! My life was spent in dreams, ’
We said, ‘in shallow misery.
In dreams and steel and soot and grime,
In screams, and what would seem some crime
Of trying to live beyond our need...
Our lives were spent in some black creed! ’

‘Too short, too short, the days we spent
In trying to right the days before,
Too long, too long, the years we struggled
Knowing not what struggled for.
What goal, what aim, what discontent,
What loves we lost, what life we spent
In wondering what such life could be?
Short shrift for you - harsh words for me! ’

‘I’ve failed, my sons, I’ve failed you all
And so my failure tortures me,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Red Sky Warning

I saw the cloud in the morning sky
So I turned to go back inside,
And I said to my wife, ‘It’s a shepherd’s dawn,
Or the red sky early warning, torn
By the man with the evil eye.’

The silence hung in a leaden pall
As she turned her face away,
And I said: ‘I’m only the man behind,
I’m not to account for all mankind
Or a cloud at the break of day.’

She looked again and she pulled the blind
And the house was dark and still.
‘I’ve looked my last on the works of man
Through whispered tears on a trembling hand,
Or the cloud beyond the hill.’

So she sat herself where she sits today
By the glow of the ash-wood fire,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Religicide

I 'must believe' in something to be
Saved, so I've been told,
And practice all those rituals
Passed down from days of old,
Conform to thoughts conceived by men
Two thousand years ago,
The followers of Jesus, Buddha,
Krishna... So and so!

Then once I've made my choice I must
Resist all other faiths,
And war with each heretic, spill
Their blood, malign their race,
Aver that only my belief
Will take us to the stars,
While all those other foolish folk
Head to some place like Mars.

And all this on the words of those
Who trod the desert plains,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Last Meeting

My father, you were cold and grey
The last time we did meet,
You didn't speak to me at all,
Were covered in a sheet,
Your eyes were open, stared at me
But didn't see a thing,
I felt the love gush from my eyes
Like water, from a spring.

I thought that you were hiding,
That you'd played some trick on me,
That presently you'd jump on out
The way it used to be,
We'd laugh about it then for years
And mother would join in,
But still you lay, ignoring me,
The silence growing thin.

I touched you, and you were so cold,
So icy lying there,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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