A Hawaiian Lay

Let me tell you of a man in a roundabout way As you casually straighten your tie The first I heard of Wales Was in a public school in England Knotty Ash to be precise The school was at the end of Thomas Lane Which is or was all in Liverpool During her remodeling period Blitzwise I learned of high narrow valleys All wooded and full of game Rushing streams teeming with salmon Trout and prawns and tall pale riders Several years later, after the V days E & J We went to Wales on holiday for a week Staying at the cottage of the village poacher and his wife the village witch There I saw coal miners walking Black to the pub and to home I saw great piles of slag heaps and fences around holes in the ground The hills were round and green and treeless The streams still teemed with trout And rabbits were all for the taking That was in the forties I returned in 87 There were maybe five more houses The salmon still jumped madly up the weirs Wales was as magic as ever It had not changed In 1956 from the window of a landing plane I saw Hawaii Green Mountains jutting from the sea Oahu was emerald in a sea of azure blue Three years I lived there on the edge of the Alawai Canal Twelve bars down from the Royal Hawaiian Painted Kaiser pink to please his wife Which was all part of Waikiki I met an old man of fifty or so Who told me how beautiful it had all been After it’s remodeling period Pre Tourist Era To humor him I asked what was different All these hotels and roads and traffic He said sadly Now I’m fifty or so I saw Waikiki on TV last week I may never go back Did I tell you about Wales? I lied. Your tie is crooked