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Gavin Ewart

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The Prigs of Suffering

So, ruminating in a City bar,
taking a glass of sherry wine,
time too is golden, once a man could say
‘Dear lady, let me…’ from the 16th floor
the buses are like toys, the men like ants,
commerce is only red-nosed comics, whose
money is very quiet and middle-aged.

Throw into this, the stone into the pond,
a poem that says: ‘My wife is very ill,
she sees the anacondas coming in
through all the windows, and the sickness is
both hers and mine.’ All shared, all passionate,
young with the pity too, and in the wards
the personality keeps very quiet.

So, good intentions pave the way to Hell,
and we are all the prigs of suffering,
the words are on the page to prove it so,
short-lived and nasty; literature is proud
and boasts of what is feels, but in the end,
when money and the love alike run out,
it ends up middle-aged, and very quiet.

 

Page(s) 43

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