Gillian Bence-Jones
The Bagpipe
One summer day I waited in ambush
for a whispering girl. She came
like the first swallow and we sat
talking gently, she still shy;
realising each other’s love,
hiding the wrong and finding mead,
lying together where the red squirrals feed.
There came with a cry
a sorry sound from a bag’s bottom
from some beast in the form of a shepherd.
He had with him a notorious evil,
a nasty, dry horned, rattle bag.
On this yellow pauched prowler he began to play
and so, before pleasure, the worthy girl ran away.
A stony English instrument singing
quaveringly in a bullock’s hide;
a hissing cauldron; a black bag;
the devil’s bell, with a pole in her fork.
May it make thongs for buckles!
And a coldness on the galuphing churl
who frightened away my glorious girl.
Page(s) 145
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