The Room under the Eaves

Ascend the winding second stair

To find the room we call the spare.

It’s very cold and very bare,

A bed, a cupboard and a chair,

And something rotten in the air,

A touch of evil rich and rare,

Sad spirits, once so debonair,

Now ululate in deep despair—

The roaring boys, the millionaire,

In brass and leather underwear,

Their corpses shaved of pubic hair,

Each penis a boutonnière

It’s all a pretty rum affair,

A whiff of some satanic prayer,

A secret no-one wants to share.

Blow out the candle if you dare.

John Whitworth

All the Things

It isn’t what you may have said; it’s rather what you might.

It isn’t even what you did; it’s what you didn’t quite.

It’s how a place is laced with light and colour when you’re in it,

It’s how you make an hour hurtle past me in a minute,

It’s how you make, all arsey-versey and contrariwise,

A minute freeze for ever in the flicker of your eyes,

Yes, forever and forever in a flicker of your eyes.

You’re the silver mines of Saturn, you’re the waterspouts of Venus,

You’re the secret name Leviathan tattooed along his penis,

You’re the meekness of a ferret, you’re the cunning of a pigeon,

You’re the meaning of the meaning of the meaning of religion,

The beatitude of being there, the sanctity of stuff

And the riot of abundance when too much is not enough,

Such a riot of abundance when too much is not enough.

Like the quintessential nothing of your absence from a room,

Like the echoes multiplying down an empty catacomb,

Like the rightness of fried eggs in their affinity with ham,

Like the rightness of Rhett Butler when he doesn’t give a damn,

Like the love of Marx for cricket, like the flatulence of Freud,

Like the flocks of chocolate penguins on a clockwork asteroid,

All those flocks of chocolate penguins on a clockwork asteroid.

Oh, you’re fairer than the fairest of the choristers of Kings,

And you’re softer than the feathers on a cherub’s whirring wings,

When you move, you move like Aphrodite slipping through the waves,

As the sheeted corpses rise in jubilation from their graves,

When you smile, the smile you smile is sweeter than the Mona Lisa’s.

You’re as perfect as a poem or a parable of Jesus,

Just as perfect as a poem or a parable of Jesus.

John Whitworth