John Whitworth: Four Poems

Love at First Sight in Edinburgh

 

September rain in Princes Street,

Crowblack umbrellas, splashing feet.

I wore my collar up and you

Were running for a 22.

 

I’m on that bus, drenched with the weather,

And see you running hell-for-leather.

You grab the pole and swing aboard,

White teeth and laughing eyes. Sweet Lord,

 

Your golden summer scents the breeze,

I am enamoured of your knees.

Whoever loved who loved not at

First sight? I saw and that was that.

 

I kissed your grinful, sinful mouth,

Your East, your West, your North, your South,

So supercharged and superfine,

And once miraculously mine.

 

The years, they slip away like thieves,

Deciduous as autumn leaves.

I see you running, running yet,

And Princes Street all shining wet.

                                    John Whitworth

 

The Furniture

The furniture sat silent in the room.

The wardrobes would not say what they had seen.

The bed was cold and empty as the tomb.

She flicked the pages of a magazine

 

For information that it had not got.

Where would she go? She knew she had to go.

What did they want? She knew it was a lot.

How would she pay? Ah, that she didn’t know.

 

When would they come? Too soon. She was sure of that.

What was the perturbation on the stair?

Was it the cat? She didn’t have a cat?

Why did she feel a thickening in the air?

 

Why did she startle like a stricken deer?

Why did her eyes look terrified and wild?

What was the twittering shadow drawing near?

Where was the child, the child, the weeping child?

                                                     John Whitworth

                                                   

The Song of the Leopard Shepherd

“Leopard Shepherd on the Desert” is a track by The Underachievers

I am a leopard shepherd

And I shepherd little leopards

By the paradisal river

Where the vine-lined forests shiver

In the jungles of the Congo

Where I sing my shepherd song-o-

Oli-oli-oli-oli-

    Oli-oli-oli-oli-

        Oli-oli-oli-oli-

            O-o-o.

 

Where the amaranth and moly

Dangle slowly to-and-fro-ly

In their deliquescent clusters

(O the lustres of the clusters!),

With the buzzing of the beeses

In the tall tremendous treeses,

And the chattering of the monkeys

Like a gathering of flunkeys-

Oli-oli-oli-oli-

    Oli-oli-oli-oli-

        Oli-oli-oli-oli-

            O-o-o.

 

Where the crocodiles are gliding

Up and down and side to siding

In the rancid river water

Where they savage and they slaughter.

There I shepherd little leopards

As a proper leopard shepherd-

Oli-oli-oli-oli-

    Oli-oli-oli-oli-

        Oli-oli-oli-oli-

            O-o-o-o-o.

                                      John Whitworth

 

The Dead

 

The dead come drifting through the floors.

They float and bloat beside my bed,

Snuffling around like carnivores,

Drifting and sifting through the floors

They are not comfortable, these dead.

 

They crowd into my head and stare.

They gnaw my elbows and my knees.

They tangle in my body hair,

Like a miasma in the air,

A thing that seethes and breathes disease.

 

They will have blood they say. They will.

Have blood beslobbering their beaks.

They clamber on the window sill.

They wish us every kind of ill,

And chatter in excited squeaks.

 

They flap like bats, like birds they glide.

They hate the living as they must.

They come at us from every side

Till we have nowhere else to hide

Before we crumble into dust.

John Whitworth

The Dead

The dead come drifting through the floors.

They float and bloat beside my bed,

Snuffling around like carnivores,

Creeping and seeping under doors.

They are not comfortable, these dead.

 

They crowd into my head and stare.

They gnaw my elbows and my knees.

They tangle in my body hair,

Like a miasma in the air,

A thing that seethes and breathes disease.

 

They will have blood they say. They will.

With blood beslobbering their beaks,

They clamber on the windowsill.

They wish us every kind of ill

And chatter in excited squeaks.

 

They flap like bats, like birds they glide.

They hate the living as they must.

They come at us from every side

Till we have nowhere else to hide

Before we crumble into dust

                                        John Whitworth