Song
A Ballad of the Good Lord Nelson
The Good Lord Nelson had
a swollen gland,
Little of the scripture
did he understand
Till a woman led him to
the promised land
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Adam and Evil and a
bushel of figs
Meant nothing to Nelson
who was keeping pigs,
Till a woman showed him
the various rigs
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
His heart was softer than
a new-laid egg,
Too poor for loving and
ashamed to beg,
Till Nelson was taken by
the Dancing Leg
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Now he up and did up his
little tin trunk
And he took to the ocean
on his English junk,
Turning like the
hourglass in his lonely bunk
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
The Frenchman saw him
a-coming there
With the one-piece eye
and the valentine hair,
With the safety-pin
sleeve and the occupied air
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Now you all remember the
message he sent
As an answer to
Hamilton's discontent
There were questions
asked about in the parliament
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Now the blacker the
berry, the thicker comes the juice.
Think of Good Lord Nelson
and avoid self-abuse,
For the empty sleeve was
no mere excuse
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
"England
Expects" was the motto he gave
When he thought of little
Emma out on Biscay's wave,
and he remembered working
on her like a galley slave
aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
The first Great Lord in
our English land to honour the Freudian command,
For a cast in the bush is
worth two in the hand
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Now the Frenchman shot
him there as he stood In the rage of battle in a silk-lined hood
And he heard the whistle
of his own hot blood
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Now stiff on a pillar
with a phallic air Nelson stylites in Trafalgar Square
Reminds the British what
once they were
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
If they'd treat their
women in the Nelson way
There'd be fewer frigid
husbands ev'ry day
And many more heroes on
the Bay of Biscay
Aboard the Victory,
Victory O.
Delos
For Diana Gould
On charts they fall like lace,
Islands consuming in a sea
Born dense with its own blue:
And like repairing mirrors holding up
Small towns and trees and rivers
To the still air, the lovely air:
From the clear side of springing Time,
In clement places where the windmills ride,
Turning over grey springs in Mykonos,
In shadows with a gesture of content.
The statues of the dead here
Embark on sunlight, sealed
Each in her model with the sightless eyes:
The modest stones of Greeks,
Who gravely interrupted death by pleasure.
And in harbours softly fallen
The liver-coloured sails -
Sharp-featured brigantines with eyes -
Ride in reception so like women:
The pathetic faculty of girls
To register and utter desire
In the arms of men upon the new-mown waters,
Follow the wind, with their long shining keels
Aimed across Delos at a star.
This Unimportant Morning
This unimportant
morning
Something goes singing where
The capes turn over on their sides
And the warm Adriatic rides
Her blue and sun washing
At the edge of the world and its brilliant cliffs.
Day rings in the higher airs
Pure with cicadas, and slowing
Like a pulse to smoke from farms,
Extinguished in the exhausted earth,
Unclenching like a fist and going.
Trees fume, cool, pour - and overflowing
Unstretch the feathers of birds and shake
Carpets from windows, brush with dew
The up-and-doing: and young lovers now
Their little resurrections make.
And now lightly to kiss all whom sleep
Stitched up - and wake, my darling, wake.
The impatient Boatman has been waiting
Under the house, his long oars folded up
Like wings in waiting on the darkling lake
Strip-tease
Soft toys that make
to seem girls
In cool whitewash with two coral
Valves of lip printing each others' grease ...
A clockwork Cupid's bow. Increase!
Their cherry-ripe hullo brims the open purse
Of eyes washed white by the marmoreal light;
So swaying as if on pyres they go
About the buried business of the night,
Cold witches of the elementary tease
Balanced on the horn of a supposed desire...
Trees shed their leaves like some of these.