31/01/14 Poetry

January 31, 2014

A Cooking Egg, 1920.

En l’an trentiesme do mon aage

Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues

PIPIT sate upright in her chair

  Some distance from where I was sitting;

Views of the Oxford Colleges

  Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,

  Her grandfather and great great aunts,

Supported on the mantelpiece

  An Invitation to the Dance.

    .    .    .    .    .

I shall not want Honour in Heaven

  For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney

And have talk with Coriolanus

  And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven

  For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond:

We two shall lie together, lapt

  In a five per cent Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,

  Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;

Her anecdotes will be more amusing

  Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:

  Madame Blavatsky will instruct me

In the Seven Sacred Trances;

  Piccarda de Donati will conduct me…

    .    .    .    .    .

But where is the penny world I bought

  To eat with Pipit behind the screen?

The red-eyed scavengers are creeping

  From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

  Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.

Over buttered scones and crumpets

  Weeping, weeping multitudes

Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s. 1