Literary Notes
At age twenty I had made it to Earls Court.
The rented room was seedily solid
having been for decades
filled with wine and cheap sunlight.
Until then I had not read a thing
apart from: ‘The Ship’ by C.S. Forester
and ‘Arms and the Man’, by G. B. Shaw
both part of a school curriculum.
I liked Shaw for his wit and intelligence
No one told me then that he was, in fact,
a fascist of the worst kind,
I thought he was an erudite old Irishman
like my uncle Sean.
A pink girl with huge eye-glasses, moved in.
She was studying Geoffrey Chaucer
in the original middle-english.
I hadn't a clue.
I bought a book of poems by D.H. Lawrence.
I forget why, but I liked his name
and my uncle Sean often talked about his poetry.
Turns out Lawrence had written a pile of books also,
but back then I was just into his poems.
I read ‘Grapes’, and I read ‘Figs’.
I read ‘Medlars and Sorb-Apples’, I read ‘Peach’,
I read ‘Cypresses’.
Back then I don't think I had ever seen a cypress,
a ‘medlar’ or a ‘sorb apple.’
I read: Snake,
Baby Tortoise,
Turkey-Cock,
Kangaroo and many others.
A few years later I found out
that the poets that were considered
to be good poets, and the critics
who were thought to be good critics
didn't think much of his poems.
I tried reading the poems of the good poets,
but after a while I felt nauseous.
Then I discovered Dylan Thomas.
The pink girl did not understand his poetry,
neither did I much,
but I ate up his words like a starving man.
Turns out Dylan Thomas was a drunk
and a mean bastard,
just like my uncle Sean.
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