Gabriel Fitzmaurice: Three Poems

“Save the Last Dance for Me”

Ballybunion. Summer nights.

We danced ourselves away

To simple, sentimental songs

Soh, soh, fah, mi, ray.

We danced, we loved, we parted,

What more can I say?

We met with other lovers,

Just kids, we had our day.

We met with other lovers

By that fantastic shore,

We loved and left, we left and loved

In search of more and more.

Then came a love too big for us,

Youngsters dancing slow,

We were too young to handle it—

It broke us. Christ! the blow;

It drove us to the underworld,

We had nowhere else to go.

And always when I hear those songs,

It brings me to that time,

Ballybunion, summer nights—

It took me years to climb

Out of a love that haunted me

All those years ago,

That first big love that left us

Neither friend nor foe.

Farewell, my love, the time has come,

The time for letting go,

Farewell, my love, I end our song

Soh, fah, mi, ray, doh.

Gabriel Fitzmaurice

Clown

I’m a clown, children…