by Carol Rumens
Take back the festive midnight,
Take back the sad-eyed dawn:
Wind up that old work ethic.
Oh let me be unborn.
After a night of travelling,
How can it come to pass
That there’s the same tongue in my mouth
The same face in my glass,
Same light on the curtain,
Same thirst in the cup,
Same ridiculous notion
Of never getting up?
Cars stream above the city;
The subway throbs below,
Whirling a million faces
Like shapeless scraps of snow,
And all these melting faces
Flying below and above
Think they are loved especially
Think they especially love.
This is a free country.
The jails are for the bad:
The only British dissidents
Are either poor or mad.
I put my classless jeans on,
Open my lockless door;
I breathe the air of freedom
And know I’m mad and poor.
Love is the creed I grew by,
Love is the liberal’s drug –
Not Agape, but Eros
With his Utopian hug
And in the close, supportive,
Environment of the bed,
He is liberty, equality,
Fraternity and bread.
That is the supposition –
But I say love’s a joke,
A here-today-and-gone-tomorrow
Childish pinch-and-poke.
Perhaps I’ll believe in something
Like God or Politics;
I’d build those temples wider
But there are no more bricks.
Some women believe in sisterhood;
They’ve rowed the Master’s ship
Across the lustful silver sea
On his last ego-trip,
And some believe in Housework,
And a few believe in Man.
There’s only one man that I want,
And I want him again and again.
He sat down at my table.
He finished all the wine.
‘You’re nothing, dear, to me,’ he said,
But his body covered mine,
And stoked the fiery sickness
That’s done me to a turn –
The fool that chose to marry
And also chose to burn.
Burning burning burning
I came to self-abuse,
Hoping I’d go blind, but no,
It wasn’t any use.
I see a mother and her child
Both turn with starving face.
And that’s the story of our lives,
The whole damned human race.
My conscience is a hangover,
My sex life, chemistry;
My values are statistics,
My opinions, PMT.
Beside my rented window
I listen to the rain.
Yes, love’s a ball of iron,
And time, its short, sharp chain.
The middle-aged say life’s too brief.
The old and young say ‘wrong’.
I’ll tell you, if you don’t like life,
It’s every day too long.
Interesting writer. As I was reading it (and relating) I was admiring how she writes revealing herself in this way.
In the first lines I related in the way of waking from a night of hedonism and the headache or rather the lethargy with the day already moving about me. Sounds of people doing what they do every fay and I ought to be doing be feeling just too hungover.
Memories not yet engaging just the sense of it having been a heavy night. And that in itself being the reminder that there will be things to remember - oh God!
Take back the festive midnight,
Take back the sad-eyed dawn:
Wind up that old work ethic.
Oh let me be unborn.
After a night of travelling,
How can it come to pass
That there’s the same tongue in my mouth
The same face in my glass,
Same light on the curtain,
Same thirst in the cup,
Same ridiculous notion
Of never getting up?
Cars stream above the city;
The subway throbs below,
Whirling a million faces
Like shapeless scraps of snow,
And all these melting faces
Flying below and above
Think they are loved especially
Think they especially love.
This is a free country.
The jails are for the bad:
The only British dissidents
Are either poor or mad.
I put my classless jeans on,
Open my lockless door;
I breathe the air of freedom
And know I’m mad and poor.
Love is the creed I grew by,
Love is the liberal’s drug –
Not Agape, but Eros
With his Utopian hug
And in the close, supportive,
Environment of the bed,
He is liberty, equality,
Fraternity and bread.
That is the supposition –
But I say love’s a joke,
A here-today-and-gone-tomorrow
Childish pinch-and-poke.
Perhaps I’ll believe in something
Like God or Politics;
I’d build those temples wider
But there are no more bricks.
Some women believe in sisterhood;
They’ve rowed the Master’s ship
Across the lustful silver sea
On his last ego-trip,
And some believe in Housework,
And a few believe in Man.
There’s only one man that I want,
And I want him again and again.
He sat down at my table.
He finished all the wine.
‘You’re nothing, dear, to me,’ he said,
But his body covered mine,
And stoked the fiery sickness
That’s done me to a turn –
The fool that chose to marry
And also chose to burn.
Burning burning burning
I came to self-abuse,
Hoping I’d go blind, but no,
It wasn’t any use.
I see a mother and her child
Both turn with starving face.
And that’s the story of our lives,
The whole damned human race.
My conscience is a hangover,
My sex life, chemistry;
My values are statistics,
My opinions, PMT.
Beside my rented window
I listen to the rain.
Yes, love’s a ball of iron,
And time, its short, sharp chain.
The middle-aged say life’s too brief.
The old and young say ‘wrong’.
I’ll tell you, if you don’t like life,
It’s every day too long.
Interesting writer. As I was reading it (and relating) I was admiring how she writes revealing herself in this way.
In the first lines I related in the way of waking from a night of hedonism and the headache or rather the lethargy with the day already moving about me. Sounds of people doing what they do every fay and I ought to be doing be feeling just too hungover.
Memories not yet engaging just the sense of it having been a heavy night. And that in itself being the reminder that there will be things to remember - oh God!
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