Song

It’s ancient loves that ache the hardest,
It’s long-lost loves that throb the most,
The young in self-woe quite the proudest
Soon perk and chase another boast.

But age which glims like some faint ghost
Only recalls those years the saddest
When time by some girl’s face engrossed
Was endless and its joy was loudest.

Now tears and sickness, all that’s rudest,
Batter your ebb sands like a coast,
Those loves bestrew your grave the widest
Which gapes to be their death-deep host.

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© May 2016

Truths

Here are links to three other ballads of mine: "The Lilies of the Valley" written in 1979 and posted here on 1 March 2012; "Mr Longley's Dream" written in 1980 and posted here on 9 May 2013; and "A Penzance Ballad" written in 2013 and posted here on 2 March 2015. 

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Hist! It’s a night of oil-black cloud,
   And the wind it screeched like stoats,
The rain it dug my face with nails
   And streamed on my flapping coats.

The ways and alleys of Penzance town
   Were dark as a deep-shaft mine,
Aflash of an instant with a wind-shook lamp
   Then thick like a cloudy wine.

In a granite arch where echoes groaned
   And shadows boiled like broth,
I met a man with ice-hard eyes
   And a grin like the devil’s wrath.

He’s gaunt and fissured like a sea-soused log
   Thrown up on the grey sand beach,
He’s hung in black and hugs a text
   As if with truths to teach.

“I know a man,” says he, sneers he,
   “A lickspittle all his years,
“Battened a louse on dame and wife,
   “On child, and drank their tears.

“Oh, he strutted it, his hand to th’pump,
   “Squire, tenant and field hand in one,
“Staff to all, as fat meat on bread,
   “Or the corn-stirring heat of the sun.

“But he’s runt within, a lacklust cur,
   “Fawning, wet-chopped, plead-eyed,
“Clawing for petting, for morsels, for thanks,
   “And, short-changed, quick to chide.

“Like plague-hagged fleas he jumped his berths,
   “Mad-hurt by word or look,
“And gorged in the warmth of his new love’s shift
   “Forgot the loves he forsook.

“Now he’s old and rejected, crabbed by loss,
   “And shambles by day or night
“The cobbles and flags of Penzance town,
   “Damning others’ wrongs with his right.”

I snubbed that shadowed man’s hoarse words
   And shouldered on my way,
The rain it clattered in gutters and spouts
   And the gulls groaned in the spray.

Later, in thought, I ate my bit
   And, peevish, drank my draught:
Oh, what is that whisper in the wind-cold hall
   As if a demon laughed?

Then, climbing the stairs to rest, I passed
   A mirror and screamed to see,
Faint in the dark with his fissured face,
   That fatal man: it was me.

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© May 2016