The Grail
In the village Bellastrino
On the craggy Tuscan hills,
Lies an old abandoned Abbey
And the Church of San Michele,
Though the village was abandoned
There are two who would not go,
The Abbot, Father Grandier,
The Priest, Don Angelo.
The Abbey on the mountain top,
The Church down in the dell,
They'd fought, these two, for twenty years
Consigning each to Hell!
For in the Church of San Michele
Before the village failed,
Down in the crypt, beneath the floor
They'd found the Holy Grail.
A bowl, fine wrought in pale green glass,
There's no room for debate,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Toxic Assets
'I have to go to town, ' she said,
'We'll catch the early bus.'
She'd overdrawn her credit card,
I knew - she always does!
I groaned and then I moaned a bit,
I'm just a country clod,
'I hate the crowds in town, ' I said,
'I'll stay here, on my tod! '
'You'll come with me, ' she said again
And used that piercing look,
The one that gets her everything
She wants, by hook or crook.
So there I was, adrift in town
While she went to the Bank,
To sort out her finances with
Some guy she knew as Frank.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Swan Song
Her hair was as black as a starling's tail,
Her cheeks as pale as a swan,
Her eyes, like two slim moonstones, glowed
And her mouth was the Holy Grail.
She'd played in the dirt of the village street
So long ago, so long...
She'd swum in the pools of the mountain stream,
But now, that girl had gone.
While I still rise with the early bird
To tend to my father's fields,
As the only son of an only son
I watched the woman leave.
She cried sweet tears as she said farewell
And vowed to come back, and soon,
But the village streets of a western town
Hold nothing for Ling Xiaodan.
The weeks went by, then the months and years
And I heard of her now and then,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Death of Magnus Kep
It was ages since I'd seen him,
So I felt quite out of step
With the old Etruscan sculptor
That I knew as Magnus Kep,
He was brooding in an alley
By an old Byzantine store,
Then he saw me, and he beckoned,
And we walked along the shore.
He was hunting there for marble,
For his studio in Graz,
But we stopped in at a wine bar
And we sampled their Shiraz,
And he told me things he'd never said
To anyone before,
About why he searched the Holy Land,
And ruins, by the score.
'I can see their shapes within each block
Of marble, ' he had said,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Red Petticoat
You were no beauty, Anne Boleyn,
Your skin too dark, not fair,
Your eyes were brown, tho' almost black,
And dark, your dark brown hair;
'Not handsome, ' the Ambassador
From Venice would opine,
But everyone agreed, your slender neck
Was very fine.
Your sister Mary wooed the King,
And took him to her bed,
She'd thought that she could win; he stayed
With Catherine, instead,
For Harry never dignified
The whores he conquered, when
The skirts he couldn't raise were far
More Queenly, then, to him.
Your eyes, they sparkled, led him on,
Your lips they told him 'No! '
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Barn at Willoughby's Farm - II
Jacinth's Tale
He was always there on the fringes
Of my world, when just a child,
There wasn't a time he wasn't there
To guide, protect, to chide,
He'd follow me safely home from school,
He'd take me for a ride,
A cousin, so many times removed
From those on my mother's side.
I wasn't the only sibling, but
It was me he called his pet,
The others would get quite jealous
And they'd not let me forget,
‘He carries a torch for you, Jacinth,
And never will let you be! '
But when I was just a teenager
He made me feel like a queen.
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Salomé
The play was called Salomé, and we
Thought it was an omen when
The girl that played the leading part
Was stricken with the mumps,
So we had to get a new one, and we
Called on Mrs. Newman, who was
Thirty, going forty, and too
Large around the rump.
There was little we could choose from
In the cast, if we should lose one,
So the stand-ins were recruited from
The Geriatric Home,
There was Barney, who'd gone missing
On a trip to Little Gissing, though
His body had returned, he'd left
His faculties to roam.
Then Madge and Mavis Murray were
Recruited in a hurry to
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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Starman
From the whirling clouds of matter swirled
From some dark distant place,
Far beyond the distant vistas that
The Hubble's lens could trace,
There approached a battered vessel like
The long lost Holy Grail,
With a magno-drive, half crippled, as
It landed on its tail.
With the crusted metal glowing with
The detritus of space,
And an inner hum, a grinding like
A flywheel out of place,
There was seen to be an opening,
A long descending lip,
And a man with moons and crescents
On his helmet, left the ship.
And the suit he wore was silver of
No texture known to man,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Devil On The Tree
It was coming on up to Christmas
When I received an unusual text,
‘We're travelling round the country and
We thought we'd visit you next.'
It was signed Giselle, the cousin from Hell,
And I shook right down to my boots,
For ‘we' meant daughter Annabelle Leigh
With a reputation to suit.
I think she was sired by a Demon down
In the Seventh Circle of Hell,
She'd never been smacked, not even a tap
When she'd scream, and shout and yell,
Her mother was one of those wussy types
Who'd studied psychology,
Was into behaviour models, rather
Than putting her over her knee.
They came with their bag and baggage, said
They'd only be here for a month,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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The Portrait of Rachel Fayne
She glided into the studio
And dropped her clothes on the floor,
Gave the artist a pirouette,
And said: 'Do you want any more? '
He shrugged, and told her to take a seat
While he etched the background in,
'I'll paint you draped on the canapé,
I'll tell you, when I begin! '
She wandered naked around the room,
At home in the artist's den,
Rachel Fayne was the model's name,
She'd modelled since she was ten.
From auburn hair to her shapely calves
She'd stared from a hundred scenes,
That hung in frames under different names
As a slave, or a Gypsy Queen.
Her lips were full and her eyes were green,
They'd startled men in the past,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
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