7 Middagh

Benji and Carson
As the bombs began to fall on London
Were down by the Brooklyn Bridge
Drinking a toast to the moments
They had written that day

Wystan was wrestling
Over interesting passages in Henry James
In which it said
The commentator and the man are not the same

They drank in the bar
And wrote in the parlour

They could not hear the bombs
In the Northern Heights
They were too far away
To see those fearsome lights
But they felt them

Gypsy did striptease
While the editor was fed up with her habits
Always naked to breakfast
And cooked up a cocktail
That was two parts whiskey
One part benzedrine tablets
They drank in the bar
And wrote in the parlour

They could not hear the bombs
In the Northern Heights
They were too far away
To see those fearsome lights
But they felt them

And their dreams were
Bright colored brilliant
The kind of dreams where
Poems by Wilfred Owen
Could be read in reverse
And spare the seed of Europe one by one

And glasses of sherry
Were not necessary
To make the days more manageable
With London calling them cowards

They could not hear the bombs
In the Northern Heights
They were too far away
To see those fearsome lights
But they felt them

But modern’s a stillbirth
That was born before it died in 1939
Or was it ’45?
And we’ve been attending
The longest saddest funeral
In history without even knowing