19    Anna the Witch

“Anna are you worn and hard by your graft?

Anna will you wail and chill like the draft?

Anna will you tell us a tale of your craft?”

“Though spikey lees, behind betray,

I will not tell thee how I play,

I will not tell thee of the cave,

Nor of the silent darkness’ wave.”

“Anna play your tricks on me,

Anna, show your power to see,

Anna, Anna hear my plea!”

“Nay child I will not now bewitch thee,

Neither will I conjure here the sidhe,

To haunt and never let thee free.”

“Anna, with a thong of leather,

Anna, with a lucky heather,

Anna can you bend the weather?”

“Gale and hale, tornadoes of fire,

Flood and muds, deserts and mire,

Rain wash down the fools and all,

Silence follows final call.”

(Graham   27 February 2023)

20    The music of ‘Streets and Dreams’

Tarzan climbs a liana

            from the earth’s tough core

            through Easby’s Abbey tree

            to Valetta’s strait street leak.

Shit man!         And the bay goes, ah!

Ipso facto        too far,

too far to deny

            some horrible foreign tunnel leads

            to a vacant Eel Pie Island,

too far to buy

            a true standard to plant

            some place on the Jazz Ait.

Then    let ten listen   

            to the anchovy sound of an annual

HALLELUJAH           ϋμνος to a royal court planner.

So, no eel pie   to chew on then

nothing           but a boom-time rapper

            in a banana bandana

easing his deadly vowel chains

            into your fitful ocean and

urging nocturnal earthen       seizures.

On a roll          even an eerie eleven

            does not haunt the earth

for hell             gathers sooner

and colours a rather rough Rubicon

bronze             from north to south

rust red           from east to west

And now rife with fossils

            set forth and stressed

            aloof and dumbed

they rhyme

            laid out to Mallaig where

            di Lasso disowns the air

as if Lorca had swallowed     our defence lines