It!

What did you mean
I'd 'learn from it?'
I learnt so much
That my spark was lit
When all that you spoke
Was holy writ
In the early years,
In the way of it.

I mused, and listened
And took it in,
And sought for the path
Of the way within
'Til I thought I'd found
Original sin -
And a box to tack
My religion in!

I cared so much
That my fingers bled,
My eyes ran blind
And my senses, dead!
My mind is numb
And my heart is bare -
Just what was the 'it'
In the 'that' out there?

David Lewis Paget

I Work Machines

Some ride high pacers
Then buckle, then groom,
I toil the mornings
And weary by noon,
Some lie on beaches
While others sip wine,
I work my magic
From noon until nine.

Some pass each hour in
A long, speechless haze,
Some watch from windows
Some others, for days,
Some look for something
They cannot define,
I work machines
That decipher each line.

Some will learn nothing
Who sit by and wait
For life to approach them
Before it's too late,
I tend to secrets
In shape and in form,
Lending my essence
From dusk until dawn.

Others may wait
For the end of their spell,
I weave my magic
With engines from hell,
Engines of noise that
By dight and by dint
I coax from disaster
As slowly - they print!

David Lewis Paget

Do What You Will

'The best, you left with me!'
That part I loved in you
Is with me still,
And dream-sleeps in my memory -
Do what you will.

Nor will your storms and tempests
In their shallow pique
Drive it away.
Your moods and clamours melt
At my disarray.

To mutter at the distances
Long laid between us;
With sword and quill;
You cut me at the quick,
I score your spill.

'Til you do leave, have left,
Left me with this,
One battered heart;
I stroke and touch at will
Your better part.

While you play now at roaming
To mourn black birth,
In some deep glooming
At the dark side of the earth.

David Lewis Paget

Bitter Heart

And what strange time is this;
When all I loved has left,
And all I didn't
Crowds and breaches
My abyss.

With nothing left but silence
At my head,
They smile and murmur,
Claw and moan me
At my bed.

Where I can best forget
You ever were,
As buttocks, legs, thighs, lips
Deepen my despair.

For when I plunge and cry
And fall apart,
It's you I stab and reach for,
Bitter Heart!

David Lewis Paget

Before We Part

And you, my father
Who cast my light
In the dim mists
At my mother's art -
The road narrows,
The pace speeds
And you may fall
Before we part.

Your threescore years
And ten are run,
And you must weary
At each stile
For somewhere soon
The stranger waits
In the long shades
By the dark mile.

And he will beckon
You with him
To leave us grieving
Every one,
No time to speak
Or bid goodbye
Just mute dismay
Once you are gone.

So should you wonder
As you turn
To glance behind
And leave us here;
We love you well -
This much you've won;
What else, you'll find
Will wait you there.

David Lewis Paget

Twenty Years Down

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,
Nothing we thought that we had no say in,
Love was the word that we thought to play in
That took no count of the cost.

But now your shadows lie dim within us
And every laugh has a shattered sound,
Left to the rest of our lives, we spin us
Ever the wake of the dream that in us
Ran aground!

David Lewis Paget

Spoils Of War

I have sought our scattered scenes
In the seasons of the sun,
I have traced our wayward maps to find
Where we became undone,
Where the tattered snapshot tears
Spilling all we tried to hold,
What became of you, my lovely,
With your hair of yellow-gold?

For I only blinked an eye
Only seemed to pause, and then
You'd been lost to me for years and you
Were coming back again,
I have sat the night alone,
Sat the night to blink and stare,
I'll be old and grey, forgotten
When you're coming up for air.

And I've counted all the days
Though I can't remember one,
Since we went our different ways and let
Our tears dry in the sun,
I have caught your echoes blind
Like the man who never saw,
But you come back to me often, like
Some ancient spoil of war!

And I wonder where it lies,
Every year's repository,
Since the mirrors we once turned to
Ceased to look like you and me,
Though I turned to feed the spark
From the shadow of each lie,
You had slipped so far from me, I found
No trace of you and I.

I'm your father, as before,
You're my sweet, my spoils of war,
And I live with every memory
I garnered in my store.
You may think my love was lost,
That I left you far behind,
But I kept you with me always
In the forefront of my mind!

David Lewis Paget

Spend and Grieve

Another year ended
Over and done,
What have we left of it
Now that it's gone
- What did we lend it?

Only the tears
Of the last year's spending,
Some of the fears
A beginning, some endings;
Raking our friends
By the pen and the sword with
No wound mending.

How at the fall of the next year, may
We garner our grievings;
Once we have plundered and purged at will
Our last year's leavings?

Only in time
May we learn our writ;
We spend and grieve
Befriend and leave -
So be it!

David Lewis Paget

Pengellen

Each winter the grey-greying streets of Pengellen
Fall silent as dampness creeps in at the hearth,
And miners and men speak in whispers of heaven,
Of darkness and penance, of copper and dearth.

No children are seen on the streets of Pengellen,
Each wife fears her shadow, and hurries inside,
While mirrors have long been discarded, forgotten
That no man may see what his God may decide.

For so it was once that the men of Pengellen
Were busy and purposeful, masters of time,
The wealth that they won taught that greed was forgiven
Though every man feared, and was ruled by, the mine.

For deep in the earth with a pick or a chisel,
A shovel, an oath in a gaelic discourse,
They quarried the bowels of some God-awful midden
To pile the green copper in place of the gorse.

So pitted the surface from shaft to Pengellen,
So pitted and scorched that no flower would grow,
And brown was the landscape, and scarred was the bracken
That burst from the copper-green dirt down below.

While every stone cottage gleamed white in Pengellen
To mock at the bracken that patently lied,
For every small child played as happy as heaven
As if they believed they had God on their side.

The copper ran deeper than deep flowing runnels,
The miners would blast, and then pump and shore up,
'Til some had remarked, 'were the heavens so tunnelled
The mine would arrive with the first taken up.'

And higher and high were the skimps by Pengellen
'Like mountains by men' was the miner's assent,
Their pride went in hand with their wealth and their women,
And Godless and grim was the worship they spent.

They drilled to the sixty and six hundredth level,
With six levels more to blast out, pump and shore,
No man could have known that the deeper he tunnels,
The darker the horror he finds at his door.

They ranged at the back as the copper was falling,
Stood silent in shock at some evil refrain,
As into the light groped the Prince of the Morning
From where he'd been cast in his thousand year chain.

The miners streamed back to the streets of Pengellen,
They crowded the Kirk that had never been filled,
And prayed to the Lord they had always forsaken,
Then went to their cottages, locked themselves in.

While stamping and raging the length of Pengellen
He called for an anvil to shatter his chain,
The mist and ill wind that had told of his coming
Were never to lift from Pengellen again.

These sixty long years have brought change to Pengellen
No child has grown old and no miner has died,
They fast on a bread that is flat and unleavened,
And drink brackish water for penance beside.

The cottages now are both damp and rat-ridden,
Are grey and neglected, and empty of cheer,
And deep-dense the mist that encloses the midden
Pengellen is lost for the best of each year.

While whispered at evens are long supplications
White-faced behind windows both bolted and barred,
And dearth is a thousand years waiting to happen,
While green is a colour considered ill starr'd.

David Lewis Paget