What’s in a Name?

My friend, Olly Dee, is a funny old card,

He could have been so many things,

A builder, an architect, surgeon, a cop,

A soldier, a pilot with wings;

In fact, he did nothing at all with his life,

Not one little thing did he do,

He spent all his time meditating at large,

And blaming his mother, at Loo.

 

Someone once said: – ‘What’s in a name?’

It’s simply a patent disguise –

But Oll has a brother, who’s simply a Fred,

Who just won the Nobel Prize.

One time, long ago, Olly filled out a form

To prove that he really was there,

A letter came, postmarked the palace at dawn

To say that they’d made him a ‘Sir’.

 

He never could face writing in for a job,

Or sitting his licence to drive,

His tax is a mess, and he’s changed his address

Seven times before agents arrive.

There’s never enough of a space on the page

When it’s – ‘Sign – or risk paying a fee,’

For Oliver Cavendish Norton FitzWalter

John Lindisfarne Ackerman Dee.

 

David Lewis Paget

Hush!

‘Hush! Dear, Hush!

Your mother has went,

To fly all night

A broomstick, to Gwent.

You must be quiet,

Lips heavy as lead,

Or father will wake

To a broom in his bed.’

 

‘Hush! Dear child,

She’s painted her nails,

Rubbed in the ointment

Of bats and snails,

Put on a hat that’s

As black as pitch,

And ducked right under

The candlesticks.’

 

‘Three times three

The cock has crowed,

And spilt its blood at

The old crossroads,

Your mother’s known

As a mighty Dame,

But sports herself

In the Devil’s name.’

 

‘She flies by night

Where the air is hot,

Over the roofs

And the chimneypots,

Then swoops on down

Like a fiend in a fog,

Down on all fours with

The graveyard dog.’

 

‘She kisses the goat

Right under its tail,

Then makes her enemies

Fortunes fail,

She blights their crops

And their kine run dry

A thimble pricked

Sees them waste, and die.’

 

‘And while she dances

Beneath the Moon,

Her husband slumbers

At home, alone;

If once he should wake

With the slightest suspicion,

It’s then that she’ll face

The Inquisition!’

 

‘The old witch-finder

Will seek her art,

Will strip and search

For the Devil’s Mark,

Will look for a place

Where she feels no pain,

Insert his needles

Again and again!’

 

‘Then duck her well

In the swimming chair,

She’d better sink

Than survive it there,

For once she floats

And the magic’s known

The stake is waiting

To burn the crone.’

 

‘To burn her clothes,

Her flesh, her hair,

The crowd will gather

Her screams to hear,

And she will beg them

To end her pains,

Garotte her before

The unholy flames.’

 

‘So Hush! Dear, Hush!

Your mother has went,

To fly all night

A broomstick, to Gwent.

If you should cry

And bring us disgrace,

They’ll burn you too

In the marketplace.

 

David Lewis Paget

Interview with the Executioner

‘A very good morning to you, my good lord,

I trust you’ve been sleeping exceedingly well,

The lodgings are cramped at this time of the year,

Not what you’re used to

But now that you’re here,

I’ll be your host ’til your conscience is clear.’

 

Sir Francis Throckmorton, in fear for his life,

Stumbled and strained at the chains in his mind,

Eyes black and troubled, a stubble, sore knees,

He’d spent his last night

In the cell, ‘Little Ease,’

But two foot by three foot, and full of disease.

 

Courteous ever, the Rackmaster Norton

Was eager to show off his gadgets and gears,

‘These are my children, my lovers, my life,

Caress you and press you,

Impale you in strife,

Persuade you to talk, or distract your poor wife.’

 

Norton was charming, he stroked the Rack pulleys,

He rattled the chains that were spattered with blood,

He showed him the brazier, coals from Kingstanding

The cat o nine tails

And the irons for the branding,

The thumbekins to cripple the right and left hand in.

 

‘Mankind’s inventions to loosen the tongue;

Here the skull crusher, the cords for garroting

The griddle to roast the pale flesh from your bones,

Admit to your treason

There’s no reason known,

Why you should submit to this treatment alone.’

 

Throckmorton paled, but he steadied his tongue,

‘I have no comrades, I act on my own.’

Norton had smiled and then burst into laughter,

So, my good lord

It’s the Rack or the slaughter,

But first you’ll embrace my Lord Exeter’s Daughter.

 

‘I mind when the Jesuit Bryant was here,

Strapped to the rack as the tumblers turned…’

Norton would share what he thought a good jest,

‘He came a foot longer

Than God sent him blest,

I stretched and I stretched him until he confess’d!’

 

Throckmorton felt all his sinews and bones

Tearing and grinding at sockets and veins,

Thirty two minutes they stretched to the limits,

Still he kept silent

He would not complain,

They rested him then, and petitioned the Queen.

 

‘Traitors must speak, must be put to the ‘pains’,

Please be as gentle as treason deserves!’

Thus they attached all the chains and the locks,

Stretched the poor wretch

To the ends of the stops, for

The names of the friends of the Queen of the Scots.

 

That was enough for Sir Frances Throckmorton,

Anything, merely to make the pain stop,

He sat by the Rack, such a sad man and broken,

Gave them Mendoza

And Paget, and Owen,

Then waited for Tyburn, the rope and the drop.

 

‘England’s a tragic, dishonourable place,

The river is foul, and the Tower a disgrace;

But I have such torture to make the heart race…’

Said Thomas Norton

Who finished Throckmorton,

Then went back to Rack someone else in his place.

 

David Lewis Paget

Ice Man

From Cap de Hault to Frenchman’s Lease

Lies seven miles of moving ice,

A lady comes there once or twice a year

To view that precipice.

The glacier, that tortuously

Grinds along that deep moraine

Is known to all as ‘Adam’s Fault’,

And Eve despairs the bleak terrain.

 

Eve Grise de Mare du Montalban

The countess from her place of fame,

Who played coquettish with her fan

When first to Adam’s Fault she came.

Gervase and I both courted Eve

But she played him, and then played me,

The contest was uneven, for

Gervase was old nobility.

 

We both enjoyed a hearty climb

And took our contest to the ‘Fault’,

Who first would conquer Frenchman’s Lease

And reach the peak, should win it all;

The right to ask the lady’s hand,

To claim the prize of her by right,

The loser, then, would quit the scene,

Would disappear him, overnight.

 

The day was cold, a storm was due,

We set out with our picks and rope,

The ice was clear as rippled glass

As we ascended up the slope.

We’d made three of the seven miles

Before the storm burst over us,

Gervase was slightly in the lead

But stopped beside the Fault to rest.

 

The glacier was close beside

When I pulled up to shelter, then

A crevice, fifteen metres wide

Had opened up, quite close to him.

Gervase half turned, the blinding sleet

Reduced our vision down to naught,

He sought direction with his feet

And pitched head first into the Fault.     

 

The depth seemed bottomless, I heard

Eventually, a distant thud,

Gervase had hit the glacier floor

And I was certain he was dead.

The storm, in one short hour had flown,

I turned and headed down again

To summon help, but he was gone;

I never saw Gervase again.

 

A year had passed, I asked my Eve

Her hand in marriage, and she wept;

I knew she loved Gervase, not me,

But he had gone… She would accept;

On one condition, that we two

Would journey back to Adam’s Fault

Each year, until the glacier

Delivered up its grisly vault.

 

I had agreed, for then I knew

How slow the glacial ice would flow,

To bring that body down the Fault

Might take a hundred years or so.

But warming of the planet’s face,

In recent years, increased its speed,

Though forty seven years had passed

Gervase would surface soon, indeed.

 

Last season, workers on the slopes

Had claimed to see a darkened shape

Deep in the ice at Cap de Hault,

But too deep to negotiate.

My mouth went dry, and I perspired

To think of that unholy hour

When Eve would see her love, Gervase

And set that love, again, on fire.

 

This year, I begged her not to go:

‘We’re getting old, too old for this,’

I pleaded, but her mouth was set:

‘We must be there for our Gervase!’

A week went by, and then the call:

‘A man lies underneath the ice,

We see him clear,’ the worker said,

‘He’s staring, looking up at us!’

 

So Eve and I walked up the slope

To see Gervase, entombed in ice,

He looked much as I’d left him there,

Eve sighed and wept: ‘My poor Gervase!’

‘He’s just a boy!’ she sobbed, and looked

Surprised he wasn’t old, like us,

The world had aged, and so had we

But he had travelled with less fuss.

 

And so I’m back, have locked our room

And left Eve to her love, Gervase,

I have a need to write my gloom

Before they take him from that place,

For when they pull that body free

From fifty years of shifting ice,

She’ll see what she’s not meant to see

Emerge from that old precipice.

 

For when they roll him from his bed

While Eve looks on, remembering,

I’ll long have left this place of dread,

One bullet, swift, dismembering,

Will leave no pain, no guilt behind

Unlike the corpse of her Gervase,

Unlike the ice pick in his spine…

The shock and horror, on her face!

 

David Lewis Paget

Metzengerstein

I think that I was only nine

When first I met Metzengerstein,

Too young to know his foul intent,

Too young, too pure, too innocent.

 

He lived in some old ruined church

With gothic columns, vaulted arch,

That sheltered him from thundered skies,

And hid, in gloom, his enterprise.

 

For from that church were mutterings

On windy nights, such utterings

As screams, while weird unholy moans

Disturbed the graveyard’s scattered bones.

 

He wore a cape that wrapped him in

A hat, broad-brimmed, and black as sin,

His gaiters to the knee were brown

The boots he wore, they made no sound.

 

At night I’d see his shadow pass

Dark stained, upon my window glass

As stealthily he roamed abroad

While mist and fog obscured the road.

 

He came from some small German town,

My kindly father asked him round:

‘We must be kind, and make no fuss,

But treat him just as one of us.’

 

Metzengerstein then came to call

And sat and stared – stared at us all,

My mother brought us cake and tea

And laughed, and smiled most happily.

 

She was so sweet, so fair of face

My father said: ‘She lends us grace.’

She was much younger, then, than he,

He’d brought her from the old country.

 

But while she played the welcome host

Metzengerstein watched her the most,

His eyes burned fierce beneath thick brows

As once he’d spied on German fraus.

 

He came again, again and he

Ignored my father, ignored me,

But watched my mother’s every move;

She danced, to see if he’d approve.

 

My father sat bemused and still,

And worried too, for I could tell;

His wife would seem to be bewitched,

Metzengerstein had scratched her itch.

 

So soon that sweet and dainty dame

Had added rumour to her name,

She raised her skirts above the knee,

Wore tops as low as low could be.

 

While in our parlour, came the sounds

Of dancing music, all year round,

Metzengerstein sat in his chair

While she would dance, and taunt, and stare…

 

Right back at him, full in the eyes

As if he had her hypnotized;

‘I wish I’d never asked him here,’

My father muttered, in despair.

 

Then one day when I was but ten

My mother, with Metzengerstein

Went out, and said: ‘We’re going to search,

The bowels of that ruined church.’

 

He’d told her there was music there

Would charm the roots of her fair hair,

Would spin her giddy in the dark

Would faery-like, ignite her spark.

 

I waited ’til my father came

And told him I was not to blame:

‘But mother’s gone, some stairs to climb,

She’s gone with that Metzengerstein!’

 

We waited, and we waited on,

But of the two there was no sign,

At length we sought the church in pain

But all was echoes in the rain.

 

For days and weeks, and then for years

I watched my father burst in tears

Whenever tunes, they did remind him

Of his wife… Metzengerstein!

 

And lonely then became his life,

He mourned his only love, his wife,

But she had disappeared, as if

Her dainty frame did not exist.

 

This year, as autumn winds were due

I found that I was fifty-two,

When down the road I saw a sign –

My mother, and Metzengerstein!.

 

She danced on in, and said: ‘We’re back!

We found no music in the rack.’

I looked and stared like one deranged –

For neither of the two had aged!

 

My father, crippled in his chair

Cried out: ‘Oh God! Is that my dear?’

And she shrank back to see him now,

This pale old man, his feeble brow.

 

‘I have been but an hour or so;

What’s wrong? Where did my husband go?’

I looked at her through childhood tears:

‘You have been gone for forty years!’

 

She swooned, fell swiftly to the floor

As I peered out the open door,

But of that cape there was no sign,

He’d gone for good – Metzengerstein!

 

David Lewis Paget

 

Skipping!

A little girl was skipping;

As she swung her skipping rope

The neighbors heard her singing

And the song she sang was – Quote:

 

‘Mummy’s in the parlour

And she’s there with Uncle Fred,

Daddy’s in the garage

Says she’s doing in his head,

Auntie Jane was crying

Now she’s swimming in the pool

And I must keep on skipping

‘Til it’s time to go to school.’

 

The neighbors saw her skipping

All along the afternoon,

She skipped a hundred singles

As she sang her little tune:

 

‘Mummy’s saying nothing

But she hasn’t any clothes,

Uncle Fred is staring

With a chopper through his nose,

Auntie Jane is floating

But her face is turning black

And Daddy’s in the garage

With a rope around his neck.’

 

A little girl was skipping

But there wasn’t any sound,

I guess she’ll still be skipping

When the sun goes down…

 

David Lewis Paget

The Angel of Mons

He called for me from his hospital bed,

He needed a priest, and soon,

The old man lay in his disarray

In the cool of the afternoon,

I started to read the Viaticum,

His face was turned to the wall,

But then he stirred, and muttered one word

From the depths of his troubled soul.

 

‘Mons’, he muttered, and I was still

While he raised his gaze to mine,

I saw the struggle he fought within

Then I noticed his eyes a-shine,

‘I was an Old Contemptible,’

He said with a trembling voice,

‘I’ve been to the shores of Hell, old son,

If you thought you could give me a choice.’

 

‘Now, I’ve never spoken of this before,

War is a terrible thing,

The Devil rides in the enemies eyes

While the bullets just rattle and zing.

I’ve walked through rivers of blood,’ he said,

‘I’ve lain in acres of pain,

At Mons, outnumbered by three to one

In the mist and the cleansing rain.’

 

‘I killed so many, I must confess,

A rifleman born and bred

Full fifteen rounds each minute I loosed

At the sight of a bobbing head

Their field grey uniforms swarmed across,

We cut them off at the feet,

But then their artillery started up

And we knew we’d have to retreat.’

 

‘Death was having a field day, son,

Taking us, one by one,

I didn’t believe I was going to live

No more than my mates had done,

They lay in pools on the muddy ground

Their eyes a-stare, amazed,

The bullets that took them arrived unsung,

To herald an early grave.’

 

I patted his hand to quieten him,

I saw that the end was near,

The war he spoke of was over and done

But for him it was crystal clear,

I tried absolving his early sin

I held his trembling hands,

‘I need to tell you the rest,’ he croaked,

‘The awe-ful Angel of Mons.’

 

‘The Germans had us, the end was nigh,

We turned to defend at the last,

When up above us a shape was formed

With wings that glowed like glass,

A glowing angel with luminous wings

And it turned to the enemy,

The guns were silenced, the air was still

And the Germans turned to flee.’

 

Sweat broke out on the old man’s brow,

He shivered and let out a sigh,

He’d told no-one of the things he’d seen

At Mons, in that August sky,

The lights were suddenly dimmed in there

Like a shadow of former wrongs,

And graceful wings folded over his head

As he died… the Angel of Mons.

 

David Lewis Paget

The Devil Made Me Do It!

My father said, advising me

On a winter’s afternoon,

‘If you ever sup with the devil, son,

Then sup with a long spoon.’

 

‘He’ll always try to cozen you,

To draw you into his schemes,

Whenever you’re down and out, my son

He’ll fill your head with dreams.’

 

‘He’ll make you feel grandiloquent,

With a power so sublime,

You’ll think you’re all but immortal, son

As you stray from the bottom line.’

 

‘And slowly, slowly, he will fix

His hooks into your soul,

You’ll never notice the hooks, my son

As you head toward your goal.’

 

‘But come the day of reckoning

When your hens come home to roost,

It’s – ‘Sign on the dotted line…’, my son,

Too late then for a truce!’

 

‘So don’t you ever sign your name,

That’s my advice to you,

That parchment’s never the worst of things

The Devil has plans to do.’

 

‘He has a place set up for you

In his deep and dark dominions,

Stoking the fires of hell, my son

With the rest of the Devil’s minions.’

 

*          *         *          *          *

 

Many a year has passed since then,

Time tends us to forget,

I only thought of his words as those

Of some long lost vignette.

 

But then I started a business up

In a modest little shop,

With fishing tackle and bait, it boomed,

I thought it would never stop.

 

The profits soared, I built a store

So large, grandiloquent,

My rivals slandered me more and more

In terms quite eloquent.

 

I saw them off, I bought them out

I started a fishing chain,

Both Lord and Emperor now I felt

Surveying my own domain.

 

But then a salesman came to call

Who looked at me long and hard,

He shuffled up to the counter, then,

And pulled out his calling card.

 

‘A. Lucifer & Assoc.’, it said,

‘Fishhooks, Sinkers & Line’.

He reached in his pocket and spilled them out

Hooks large and small, and fine.

 

‘We’re far the biggest and best,’ he said,

We cater for every whim…’

But then he stopped as he saw my face

Turn grey, while glaring at him.

 

‘We have accounts,’ he muttered, and then,

‘You don’t have to pay, old son.

Just sign on the dotted line just here…’

But I’d reached for my Elephant Gun.

 

I grabbed his collar, I tweaked his nose,

Stuck all those hooks in his pants,

Then dragged him off to the goldfish pool

To watch the Devil recant.

 

‘You’re not going to get your hooks in me,

Old Nick,’ I raved at the wall,

But he lay splashing about, neck deep

Right under the waterfall.

 

‘So that, your Honor, is why I’m here,

The police locked me up in a cell,

I was only protecting my soul, m’lud,

From Lucifer’s hooks, and Hell.’

 

‘The Devil, he made me do it, m’lud,

Old Beezlebub, there in the court,

I shouldn’t be here in the dock today

If the Devil could only be bought.’

 

‘He offered to sell me my freedom, sir,

Just sign, and he wouldn’t sue…

I’d rather spend time in a prison cell,

But I guess… that’s up to you!’

 

David Lewis Paget

The Hole in the Bathroom Wall

The cottage was old, it needed some work

The walls were of crumbling stone,

The windows, like eyes in a tumbledown Kirk

Were staring, like sockets of bone;

I hadn’t much money, I hadn’t much choice,

‘I’ll take it,’ I said to the man,

If only I’d known what the future would bring

I would never have shaken his hand.

 

My marriage had failed, I had my young son

Just three and a half in the spring,

We bought an old bed and a table, two chairs,

Drove up there and went to move in;

The floorboards were creaky, the walls were damp,

The place was as filthy as hell,

I sat the young lad on the floor by a lamp

And I cleaned, until darkness fell.

 

The rooms were all empty, they echoed and stirred,

I thought I heard whispers and moans,

The ghosts of the past tried to warn me, I guess,

I couldn’t interpret their groans;

I tucked up the lad after dinner, in bed,

And I wandered the house overall,

Then checked out the water, and turning my head

Saw a hole in the bathroom wall.

 

It wasn’t that big, but was over the bath,

I could see through the damp and the rot,

It wouldn’t take that much to fill it, I thought,

Then I took a long walk, and forgot;

For days I was painting, cementing and fixing

The cracks were all over the place,

But never a thought of that hole in the wall –

To my ultimate shame, and disgrace.

 

Outside the cottage, a paddock ran back,

All burnt up and brown in the sun,

There wasn’t a leaf or a stick that was green

The summer had barely begun;

Old pieces of iron lay thick on the ground

And lizards lay under their shade,

I should have been warned, but it just didn’t dawn

On me then, to my utter dismay.

 

A month had gone by, the weather was dry,

So hot that we suffered like hell,

I drew a warm bath, only tepid and low

So the lad could cool off for a spell,

I reached for a towel, but nothing was there,

I remembered it out on the line,

Then ran out the back to retrieve it, and saw

What has ever since haunted my mind.

 

For over behind the old cottage, there slid

A brown skinned, and hideous snake,

Six foot in length it ignored me and went

For the hole where the wall was baked,

Slowly its body slid into the hole

As I stood there just shaking in fear,

My beautiful baby was sat in the bath

As his deadly opponent drew near.

 

I ran through the door and I screamed as I ran,

I made for the bathroom door,

Everything seemed to go suddenly slow

As I slid on the muddy, wet floor,

I finally got to the bathroom door,

Reached out, as I started to fall,

The snake had reared up, preparing to strike

From the hole in the bathroom wall.

 

We often remember ‘the day of the snake’

Since my son has grown taller than me,

He has this aversion to lizards and snakes,

And goanna’s and skinks in the tree,

We regularly walk round the cottage and fix

Any cracks, any holes, overall;

I lost my right arm from the snake as it struck

From the hole in the bathroom wall.

 

David Lewis Paget

The Time Has Come…

The vicar went to the valley,

A mountain on either side,

He built a small log cabin

To comfort his future bride,

The wind between the mountains

Brought echoes of far-off plains,

More often than not in the heart of the night,

Someone called his name.

 

The voice was sometimes muffled,

The voice, it sometimes screamed,

Whole sentences were chanted

Broke in on the vicar’s dreams,

The sounds were like a mirage

Half heard from a distant town,

Whenever the wind would begin to rise

He heard the strangest sounds.

 

A tap-tap-tap in the morning,

A tap-tap-tap at night,

As if someone was typing

Up on the mountain’s height,

The rhythm was pervasive

As it typed some ancient log,

He heard the words: ‘The quick brown fox

Jumps over the lazy dog.’

 

He ran from out of the cabin

And scanned the dusty plain,

His trusty dog was lying

Asleep on the track again,

When out from the brittle bushes

Aside of the narrow track,

A quick brown fox with a startled look,

Jumped over his old Ridge-back.

 

The vicar ran to the cabin

And fell on his knees in prayer,

What are you trying to tell me, lord,

That you’re really, really there?

I thought you were, but I wasn’t sure

But now I am – you beauty!

A voice intoned: ‘England expects

Each man to do his duty!’

 

The vicar jumped up off his knees

And praised the Lord again,

You’ve saved my very soul, my lord,

From Hell, and the pits of pain,

I’d thought that God was mine alone,

And not for everyone,

But now I find – and it blows my mind;

‘God is an Englishman!’

 

The wind was slowly rising,

It whined and whooped and roared,

It swooped along the valley,

Came in at the cabin door,

The vicar, sleeping restlessly

Heard everything, hale and hearty:

‘The time has come for all good men

To come to the aid of the party.’

 

The vicar’s not been seen of late

He’s busy, light and dark,

With hammer, nails, and canvas sails

He’s building himself an Ark,

While in a tiny township that

Lies hidden in mountain haze,

A typing teacher has just locked up,

And gone on his holidays.

 

David Lewis Paget