Party Trick

What long dread phantom
Of lost ways
Could trip your cause
To weep your want
When I have sought
Un-numbered days
For all that you
In conscience lent.

No slight despair
Could wake your need
Before I tressed
Your loss in dream,
And no cold comfort
Bought your creed,
And no pretence
Your essence gleaned.

For you lent ravage
To your grace
By cutting men
With every quick,
You veiled each aspect
To my trace,
And laid in waste
My party trick.

David Lewis Paget

Five Children I

Five Children I
Once helped conceive,
I watched them grow
I watched them leave,
And each one left
A wound in me,
And some left two
And some left three.

And now when I
Cry out in pain
There's not one left
To call my name,
There's not one left
To grieve for me
Though I wept through
Each history.

But when they grow
They may conceive,
May learn to know
What wounds we leave,
And think back on
Some long despite
When I lay staring
Late at night.

David Lewis Paget

A Welsh Hymn

Bron Dilys Teashop
Of Threadneedle Alleyway,
Swaddled in a pinafore
And cosseted in lace,
Soon charmed the borough boys
When she sang long for the scallywags
Or served up sweet tyshan lap
With her famous welsh cakes.

Her soft-breasted menu
Of cariad and comfort,
Her short tacky temper
Emblazed her blue eyes,
Dai Jones ate those long legs
Alive in the bara brith
And deep-delved her laverbread
With his brandysnap lies.

Then was Tilly Tongue-fit
Sweet cuddled in the marigold
With muddling Tom Tiddle-O
And his calico cat,
Dan Rees called for 'cave-o'
As Tom stoked the middle-up
To watch for the Billy Boyo
And Moll Thunderclap.

Long years now I've wondered
At the conjure of your alleyway;
Does Bron Dilys Jiggle-O
Still sup bara caws,
Does Willy the Wag now
Still wriggle in the coal-hole
With a mouth full of marigolds
And a handful of yours?

I spend my mind dreaming
Of cariad and comfort,
Of tight fitting pinafores
In parlour and bower,
Her bonnet up-ended
In the spell of welsh rare-bits
Sweet tasted, willy nilly-o
Back when, in Bryn Mawr.

David Lewis Paget

A Canticle for Wakeman

A few short lines informed us you were dead,
That at the last you'd spent your destiny
The battle, so one-sided at your bed
With no relief for faded dignity.

But no false platitudes to bear, thank God,
No long recriminations for past deeds,
Not one to care, not one familiar head
To ease the passing spirit of its needs.

For some is death the only guarantee
That hell's short tenure may be set aside,
That misery, and want and charity
May be consigned to someone else's pride.

When, long rejected by the ones we love
We face our insecurities alone,
What moral should we draw upon for those
Who, faultless, judge for what we should atone?

I feel at one with you, for in the deed
I too have failed too often for success,
The same bleak planet I have known and grieved
Took you along a lifetime of distress;

And found you grim, unwilling to accept
That laurels should pay some one other's fee,
When you had bled your way from debt to debt
And paid full price for wounds they wouldn't see.

So rest your head, I should have said it yet,
That someone cared, and why, and so much more,
When you had need, and I had no regret...
But then, I should have said it all before.

David Lewis Paget

This Broken Year

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

Threads

With all the art of patient mending
First this thread, and then that binding,
Now this stitch that, so demanding,
Spilt the verse I caught your mind in;
On to scattered words of wanting
Gleaned from needs and shadows, haunting;
All is lost that you believed in -
Leaving love for me to grieve in.

Now I sit and want and weave in
All the dross of bitter lendings,
New beginnings from old endings!

David Lewis Paget

Surge

At Granite Island's seaward side
We sat, and watched the surging tide,
The rapid rip, the capping crest,
The stinging spray, the ragged nest;
The long slow wheel of the sea bird, moaning,
The deep-felt urge of the white sea, foaming.

You laid your head on me, and cried:
"How long, how long?" And I replied:
"This day is ours, and for the rest...
Ah well," I sighed, and sought your breast;
You turned, long-lost at the deep shades forming
While I caught tears at the tip of day, dawning.

David Lewis Paget

Poverty Grass

Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.

Poverty grass
The paupered seed
So sickly poor alas;
The souls of the great untamed grow weak
Despair
On poverty grass.

And you, my friend,
Grew sick awhile,
And cried and cried alas;
While I grew fat on a flowering weed
Called pride
And poverty grass.

And when you left
The field to me
I almost died alas;
For I was left in a fallow field
Piled high
In poverty grass.

Wild horses we
Pricked at the wind,
Never to know alas;
That all the lord of our fortunes bought
For us
Was poverty grass.

David Lewis Paget

Port Hughes Revisited

The sand remains, but nought, my love, of you;
Our dancing shadows tilted at despair,
For everything my love required of you
Convinced me that I'd caught and kept you there.
But emptiness in me is like the weed
That devastates the long and lonely beach,
While shadows of your sadness and your need
Continue dancing onward, to the breach.

David Lewis Paget

On the Passing of My 36th Year

What
Brings this or that to here,
To loss, or spare
At these, my racked foundations?

Each tumbled brick, spilt
From toppled spires,
Where tired lies tell all guilt
Despairs
At the kindle lent
By night fires.

What pennants flung
From yard and mast in youth,
When grapeshot, ball, chain and truth
Spat,
Heeding not, my dear...
That frail craft
Time;
My privateer.

Years along, grey, drab and grim lipp'd
Salt taste and beard,
I would I'd waited there...
My Guinevere!

David Lewis Paget

On the Death of John Lennon

This world unravels, bit by bit
Each thread that binds
Is torn in rage,
And desolation stalks where wit
And beauty walked
On some lost page.

From light to darkness; life and art
And talent bleeds
At every loss,
Each shallow murder strikes the heart,
The root, the branch,
The Saviour's Cross.

Now at the height, some furtive thief
Has stolen yet
Another strand,
And left in thrall unyielding grief
To wonder at
This bloodied hand.

David Lewis Paget