Fairytale of Maesycrugiau

It was Friday evening
In Maesycrugiau
When Nelmes he said to me
“Pack up, it’s time to go.”
Then he sang Redemption Song
One final screech right through;
I turned my face away
And burned a book or two.

But what a week to see!
From sixteen down to three:
The house was reeling
From wine, guitar and flute.
It’s nearly Christmas
But no festivity
Gives half as good a time
As the Humphrey Institute.


They've got drinks big as sinks
They've got booze in the hall,
They’ve got guests glassy-eyed
As the stag on the wall.
When they first take your hand
Through that manor house door
They promise that soon you’ll be begging for more.

We made noise in no hurry
And covered in slurry;
When the band finished playing
We cried out for more.
The chilli was stinging,
All the drunks they were singing,
We started at lunchtime then drank through the night.

The ghosts in the panelled Jesus room
Were singing through the cold,
And the hurdy-gurdy pined
For Heart of Gold.

How they’d jump up and spank
On an amplified plank,
Sipping port on the sly in resplendent black tie.
Don’t crank up the tension
With stray jazz suspension –
On your feet! Raise a glass! Don’t pretend it's the last...

The ghosts in the panelled Jesus room
Were singing through the cold,
And the hurdy-gurdy pined
For Heart of Gold.



And now they’re gone too soon:
From room to empty room
There drifts a haunting tune,
A chord that can’t sustain.
Our revels disappear,
Melted and dissolute,
But what a founding year
For the Humphrey Institute!

The ghosts in the panelled Jesus room
Were singing through the cold,
And the hurdy-gurdy pined
For Heart of Gold.

© Gareth Prior 2007

Everyone’s a Fucking Poet

Everyone’s a fucking poet
An amateur psychologist
Or a professional bloody guru

They’re all into yoga
Or ayurvedic massage
Or goddamn fucking voodoo

All my friends are shrinks
Or go to shrinks
Or think they should

Am I the only one who is
Traditionally, boringly
Prosaically misunderstood?

Temporary Traffic Lights on Banbury Road

The waves are parted,
Not by a prophet, but a simple switch.
The brutish tide shrinks back,
To tremulous walls of sound, and eyes.

A course abandoned.
Not to the writhing of fish but to the spring,
Which flies unnaturally sweet,
And larks in dusty spirals on the negated road.

Claimed, not reclaimed, for a blackbird’s song.
Annexed by morning
From the silent blackened province of the night
A Spring moment, just long enough to perceive

Then the tiny massless motion breaks the dam,
And juddering, the flow resumes.
Conscious of its presence
It pulses automatic and poisonously slow.

- A lullaby for the Parktown babies

March 2001

Dust : 2nd draft from notes 25/07/05

There are lines where
There were none;
When you were in the North
And young.

Before we stood upon
This weald;
Before the falling
Dust revealed

That the softening of
The summer air
Does by flying
Lay a layer.

Of death upon the
Living things
From whose life
Its flying springs

Yet though it is life
That lays on death
We will not stay one
Beat or breath

And hold our cries
or laughter down
To quieten the
Covering ground.

For if we should how
Would we know
When dust had
taken us below?

For though there are lines
Where there were none
Our lives above
Have scarce begun.