Song of the Damaged Angels of Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart

Pick up your harp, it’s time, we've got to go;

we’ll meet them by the pines upon the down.

 If there’s something pure left over,

enough for cards and communion wafers,

(Which she always saves for later)

and  a three quid bargain bottle of red wine,

we can woo the senoritas of the town.

Makes no difference to me, I have to say,

if we play all night or just busk it for a while;

every brand new situation is a measure of some pain,

and this thing of mine won’t stay in tune

‘cause she never looks my way,

but  one cool Autumn morning  

she’ll  need some kind of shelter from this rain.

So put on your long black coat and shine your shoes;

there’s still  a chance she’ll turn her face today.

Tell me it’s okay to hum a tune  and say
I can only ever play a twisted sort of blues,

(And know that I’m not very good at that)

but if we do our best to get off this drunken kerb,

She just might put some juice inside my hat.

She just might put some juice inside my hat.

Chesil Beach

One hundred million years that point to this:
a thread across the bay, south and east;
storm battered longer than remembering.
Ancient thought thinning into mist;
an arrow crafted and sprung from the hand of God.
Now a picture of us both returning by the year
with our gifts for the arc of Time.

Scrambling up the incline to embrace the dazzled sea,
shadows of the selves we once thought our selves to be,
and now more than all of that:
two others run ahead,
a mirror for our footprints,
gathering driftwood memories.