Daughters

How can you say that I didn't care
When I planted a cornfield awave in your hair,
Gifted your eyes of a deep sea blue
That you might see me, and I might see you!

I tinted your skin with the blush of a rose
And I fashioned a tilt to the tip of your nose,
But your lips I moulded from sweet honey-dew
So that you could kiss me, and I kiss you!

Four dainty fingers on each of your hands
And one with a ridge for a wedding band,
While you lisped and you chattered on long through the day
While I smiled and I listened - what more can I say?

I held you sheltered from the hail and the rain
And I tucked you up in a counterpane,
I watched and I whispered as you fell asleep:
‘There's a rosebud blooming on the angel's cheek! '

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Second Coming

There's a lurid glow in the sky tonight,
Foretells of a lurid dawn,
And untold millions in their plight
Will wish they'd never been born!

The airwaves hiss in a ghostly voice
The static crackles their fears,
The clouds that swirl in the north tonight
Are filled with a billion tears!

And streets of people have crowded out
To mourn, look up at the sky,
A thousand voices are raised, and shout
The seminal words: ‘…but Why? '

The ground, it rumbles under their feet
The buildings stagger and sway,
The air so hot they can scarcely breathe
On this final Judgement Day!

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Handsworth Wood

Have ever you seen
On Halloween,
The cloud that covers the trees so green?
The shroud that covers the last of lovers
The shifting mist of the in-between?

I’ve stood, I’ve stood,
By Handsworth Wood,
I’ve stood as long as I thought I could;
All Hallow’s Eve is the night I grieve
My Genevieve of the purple hood.

She slipped between
The trees so green,
She slipped from me one Halloween;
The cloud had glimmered, the evening shimmered
But she was never to more be seen.

And since that cloud
Became a shroud,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Getting Old

Now that we're suddenly old and tired,
The mirrors are never as kind,
We venture out in a world that changed
As our youth slipped far behind;
We only walk at a snail's pace
And shiver in autumn rain,
Then stop to rest, as the evening light
Draws down on us, once again.

The young look on, but they never see
They'll be old one day, like us,
They think we live in some cobweb dream
And just fade away, and rust;
When I come in from the world outside
And shutter the outer door,
I see my lover still waits for me
As she's done so often before.

I tend to gaze at her longer now,
To capture her in my mind,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Why Does My Faith...

I sang in the choir when I was young,
In surplice, ruff, and gown,
I bent my head to the cherubim
And cast my eyes to the ground,
I read your word in the Holy Book
And swore to be good and true
While living in fear of an Awe-ful God,
A life spent, looking for you.

My mind was full of heaven and hell
And the things that I shouldn’t do,
But the world seemed bent on a wayward course
All done in the name of You…
For ‘Christ Almighty’ I heard on lips
That shouldn’t have breathed their sin,
And ‘Jesus Christ’ is a dirty word…
But why does my faith grow thin?

The world has turned to greed and lust,
To hate, to me for mine,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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On My Mother's 80th.

There are no answers to your questionings;
If eighty years have not revealed the truth,
Then how could I, this child of your imaginings
Begin to comprehend your loss of youth.

Perhaps you let it slip and lose all meaning
When time last yawned, and you did fall asleep,
Then youth took flight while you stayed still and dreaming
Within some sepia’d year you once did keep.

Wild eyed and worn, you always look about you
And wonder what dismay has brought to this,
The thread of age has tied and bound and caught you
And thoughts of death now tremble at your lip.

But yet, your youth may still be seen and found there
Way back beside an old welsh village pit
Where long dead miners carol ‘Men of Harlech’,
And fresh young girls in neat white pinnies sit;

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Woman

Woman, oh Woman,
Why do you try me,
Why do you shake me,
Break me
Deny me
When all that you do
Is deride and defy me?

Once we were young
And you painted your faces,
Pierced your tongues
And silk-stockinged your traces;
Wafted the scent of despair
And seduction,
Coloured your lips with
A hint of corruption,
Taunted and teased with your hips
As they swayed it,
Aimed at my reason;
Dismayed and waylaid it.

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Beggar of Wu Ma Jie

He’s laid his head on a Chinese street
There’s nothing of dignity here,
He’s bared his soul in a plastic bowl
For the rest of the world to jeer,
His clothes are ragged, his body is torn
With a million kinds of sin,
The sort that everyone walking past
Holds close; hides under the skin.

He lies in dirt on a filthy rag
To keep the cold from his bones,
And never utters a word to beg,
Though often he cries, or groans,
His face is one with the living earth
As he rests his head on the ground,
He’s soaked by the chilling winter rains
And washed by the summer storms.

His bowl holds only a few yuan
That those with a humble heart

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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At Journey's End

I'll not lie down, nor sit and wait
The black-draped barge to float on by,
Nor offer up my throat, like ears of corn
To wait the sickle sigh,
Should death's bleak hooded figure call
He'll find that I have quit the town
And left no forwarding address
That he might use to track me down.

One step ahead, I'll change my name
Then dye my hair a rich dark brown,
Or failing that, I'll shave my head
And raise my brows, an inch around.
I'll grow a beard, or cut it off
If I have grown a beard before
Then take to sailing out from ports
Where Death has sallied forth once more.

I'll dress my woman in long boots
And tie her hair up out of sight,

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Man in a Cage

The women gathered in Hurtle Square,
Or what had remained of it,
They'd coloured their lips and they'd curled their hair
They'd powdered themselves, most everywhere,
Stepped over the rubble that lay out there,
In clothes of the tightest fit.

The cars sat silent along the street,
The paint beginning to peel,
It had been so long since the world went wrong
Since the pumps had closed and the oil had gone,
The radio played a plaintive song
Of a love that ceased to be real.

The plague had ravaged the planet's face,
Had taken a billion men,
And what was left was the barest trace
Of the masculine side of the human race,
Pollution took care of their D.N.A.'s
By gifting them Oestrogen!

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poem by David Lewis Paget
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