London: Dance Tune for a Summer Night

Waste no courtesies at all
on this old strumpet
courtesies long long
outmoded before the wars—
London thou art the whore of cityes al.
Brass-haired, strident
the bus clippie flaunts to
the salacious Yankee—

Hiya, honey
I've got money,

come up bright-eyes, come for a ride
come up light-foot, come and follow
old hollow hollow
hollow courtesies lie dead
with nineteenth century Lincolnshire
but still there's a rising tide.

Breezy colonials slap your back
I'm as good as you, I'm Jack
as good as his master
faster

faster

go down hill, Jack and Jill
you've your midsummer nightmare again
for a ride to disaster

Where's disaster?

The war's all over, the blitz and the shooting,
We're on a 19 bound for Tooting.

Keep your courtesies
keep your courtesies for the cat
the mewing shadow slipping
from the theatrical street's glare
behind the milk-bottles, empty, rattling
shadowed on the doorstep where
the plum-coloured beret and the dead bleached hair
in searching embrace are held
nothing to nothing, bewildered and battling
in the fearful abyss between yesterday and tomorrow.
oh sorrow sorrow
as the tide creeps in from the misty skyline
to ebb softly back to the grey skies of nowhere
and you are the wreckage caught in its pull
the moon's at the full
but still the unperturbed cat is there
leaning furred shoulders to my shin
circling stiff-tailed in courteous condescension.

We two in the night catch eyes and grin
a little wryly, and the warm soft purring
sings a mad song to a dismall kind of musique.

28 August 1945