The service was short and clean
Lacking something of the ash and dust
But that was the way that he had wanted it
And afterwards we went to Strelley Hall
To sit on small, hard chairs
Talking about Pinter
Talking about holidays to the Far East
And about everything else
Totally unrelated to the man himself
And another, who looked like a senator
He took me by the arm and whispered
That he had seen thirty years pass by in a day
But nobody heard him
It all should be reversed, I thought
He should hear us talking first and then-
But nobody asked for my opinion
Or for his, whatever it might have been.
You can tell the dealers by their bimmers
Outside the low-rent, run-down terraces
And the bodies of the fat rats that jumped too slow
Bloom white in the alley
Every year the laggards die
So that the rest can get a little leaner
Some day, I swear, they'll be able to jump right over the houses
When they see a high beam flash around the corner
But today is not that day
Today the crows pick them up by their paper ankles and rise
God's own traffickers, taking them halfway to heaven and no further
But still demanding their pound of flesh
Claire could swear that she saw one tied to the telephone line
Hanging by its tail as if to smoke in the emissions of the city
Claire could swear on anything but a Bible
But anyway, that's enough about the rats...
Between the lab and the library
There was a duck pond
Something to study, I guess
And a little sparrow came down
And hopped around my feet
And I wanted to touch it so badly
That I almost cried.
The greenhouses on the roof over there
They look down on you as houses in heaven
Growing every herb and flower that you didn't know you needed
'Cos you didn't know you were sick
Under the holy heat lamps
The rain doesn't touch the straw in there
In those little slate-roofed cottages
Tails stay tawny in the dark
But they come out anyway
To watch a thousand circles grow perfect and sink
And the sparrow comes back.
Their souls were moved by millimetres, these young
Anaemic poets, hair a perfect pink,
The Inferno carefully placed between
The full wine glass and other, darker drink,
There caught in sight behind the pale man's hand
Holding a new edition with the word:
"Absurd" - circled six times and then forgot
A photograph alone
- and then they're served.
