“More Out-takes from Ol’ Ameriky” (The Uncollected Songbook Part 1.) There’s a train acomin’

                      There’s a train acomin’
                                             a roarin’ down the track
                      Don’t know where she’s goin’.
                                             Know she ain’t acomin’ back.

                      Her face is at the window.
                                            There’s a wailin’ from the stack
                      ’cos the smoke and cinders
                                             know there ain’t no lookin’ back.
       
                      Dreamgirl where you goin’ ?
                                             Dreamgirl where you been?
                      Dreamgirl take me with you
                                             on our midnight train.

                      Thought you done with smilin’
                                             when you slammed the door
                      now you don’t quit smilin’ ’cos
                                             that train ain’t stoppin’ here no more.

                      ’Cos, darlin’, you know
                                             ’cos, darlin’, you know,
                                             you know, you know, you know . . .
                      Sure as hell you know . . .
                                             that train ain’t stoppin’ here no more . . .
 

                      There’s a train acomin’
                                             a roarin’ down the track
                      Don’t know where she’s goin’.
                                             Know she ain’t acomin’ back . . .

                      and, brother, sure as hell, nothin’ll bring her back.

Juvenilia . . . A Teenage Notebook . . .

A grief ago*

A grief ago

the fire burned itself out

where this small dog now

dares to paw the ashes.

I shall not shout

at one too meagre

to tempt my

 injustices.

In the Manner of Walter Savage Landor.

  O prosper not the past

that we may eat upon

a harvest lost, laid waste

    by our own carrion.**

*A coherent line from a word-salad-poem by Dylan Thomas.

** A reference to overpopulated London and the Thames, polluted since the early 19th Century.
The prince destined to be King Henry IX died, aged 18, from typhoid fever from a swim in the Thames
near Richmond in October 1612.