After a Dance at Malaga

Terry Collett

In Malaga at the base camp you danced at some disco and drank Bacardi

and coke and it was well into the early hours of the morning when you left

with Mamie tiptoeing between tent ropes and the unlit areas between

and she said I can't find where my tent is and you said

I'd let you share mine but that young army guy is in mine and three in a bed

is a bit cramped but where is mine? she said searching around

touching tent ropes as she went by you stood watching trying to decide

where your tent was what are we to do? she asked let's go back

to the club until it gets lighter or we remember where our tents are

you said but I'm tired she said I want to go to bed

and sleep you searched around by the hedge of the field and then said

wait I know where mine is now and you led her

to the tent and unzipped it and there inside was the army guy

fast asleep you can come in here if you like you said

but she just stood there in the semi dark cussing into the night come on in

and be quiet you said I want my tent she said

I want my own bloody tent ok go find it then you said and began to climb inside

wait she said in a hushed voice and came over

to your tent and looked in what about him? she asked

he's asleep you replied what will he say and finds me here?

you gazed at the sleeping soldier boy his mouth open his eyes closed

a soft snore filling the air either come in or go elsewhere

you whispered I can't she said not with him there

and so she turned and wandered off into the semi dark another chance walking off

into the night some things you hope for you murmured never come right.

Piccadilly

Ezra Pound

Beautiful, tragical faces— Ye that were whole, and are so sunken; And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved, That are so sodden and drunken, Who hath forgotten you?

O wistful, fragile faces, few out of many!

The crass, the coarse, the brazen, God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do; But oh, ye delicate, wistful faces, Who hath forgotten you?

The Faithful Swallow

Thomas Hardy

When summer shone Its sweetest on An August day, ‘Here evermore,’ I said, ‘I'll stay; Not go away To another shore As fickle they!’

December came: 'Twas not the same! I did not know Fidelity Would serve me so. Frost, hunger, snow; And now, ah me, Too late to go!

Homesick

Carol Ann Duffy

When we love, when we tell ourselves we do, we are pining for first love, somewhen, before we thought of wanting it. When we rearrange the room we end up living in, we are looking for first light, the arrangement of light, that time, before we knew to call it light.

Or talk of music, when we say we cannot talk of it, but play again C major, A flat minor, we are straining for first sound, what we heard once, then, in lost chords, wordless languages.

What country do we come from? This one? The one where the sun burns when we have night? The one the moon chills; elsewhere, possible?

Why is our love imperfect, music only echo of itself, the light wrong?

We scratch in dust with sticks, dying of homesickness for when, where, what.

Anon