The Music of Vagrants

What shiftless creatures they are

Taking little pride in their hygiene or appearance

I often meet them on lonely roads

And swap sweet grasshoppers

In the golden green rain

 

Corrupted Maidenhead Idle Coventry

I often look at the skies above this woeful town

Which change constantly but never change

Only the spire of the main church gives me hope

But even she is now hidden urban and disguised

 

Corrupted Maidenhead Idle Coventry

I knew her as a girl fresh in the Berkshire fields

But over time she was corrupted without protest

By the festering men diseased and unclean

And now she lies dying on her damp whore bed

 

Pigeon Strike Hungerford

The pigeon is now in Taunton Exeter and Penzance

A wit was heard to say as he alighted from my train

Although there were many feathers on the damp platform

I could not find the remains of the bird

So I contented myself with the discovery of an engineer’s glove

Which lay stranded near where it had been previously lost

 

2018