Lament of a Girl Led Astray (score from Sister Morphine).

Put a tenner on the table as yer leavin’,

Put a tenner on the table

                                          won’tcha, dear.

Put a tenner on the table.

                                         if yer love me,

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live . . . 

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live . . . 

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live on more than

cold and bitter beer.

For many years, I admit, yes, we’d conducted a sort of meretricious relationship, which had branded me, I suppose, as a species of ‘kept woman’, for there was a lighthearted understanding that we should assist each other financially from time to time, when low on funds.

        Hence, when Douglas stole from the warmth of my bed in the small hours, I would often run to the piano to vocalise my penniless state in a patter song of my own devising . . . 

        The mock pathos of my Lament of a Girl Led Astray and jangling honky-tonk beerhall accompaniment had generally been productive of more than a tenner.

        Then, a change fell upon all things, when, in the light of one exceedingly feeble dawn, he confessed he was leaving me for a younger, more provident woman.

        ‘After traipsing after you all these years! You . . . you . . .’ I stuttered, quite beside myself with anger. ‘You . . . you . . .’ 

        Douglas turned slowly at the threshold. 

        ‘Well?’  There was a peculiar twist to his lips as if he were pleased to be hurting me.

‘You . . . you . . . bally bastard!’ I finally managed weakly.

        He gave a derisive little laugh and slammed the door.

        ‘I don’t care a blind fig who she is,’ I shouted after him senselessly, I was so angry, ‘or a brass farthing for your petty fornications!’

        Even now, his desertion, in retrospect – as I gazed in a reverie at the river’s oozy bed – prompted a bitter taste in my mouth; his laughter had simply added wormwood to gall.

Dispossession, Page 319, Sister Morphine (2008).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 
and A Bad Case (2015)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

Prochronism: Sussex folk were first to predict our Queen’s accession in 1909.

Prochronism: an anachronism marked by the assignment of an event to a date earlier than the actual historical one.

They call us ‘silly Sussex’ but farsighted Sussex folk are not so silly as to fail to celebrate their future Queen almost half a century before her coronation. The loyal Shoreham fisherman who named this boat (photographed in 1909) was clearly gifted with uncanny crystal-gazing vision (if not a command of orthodox spelling).

A serendipitous find, the original postcard snapshot has the head of our Queen’s great-grandfather on the half-penny stamp affixed to the reverse.  (The boy in the photo is the addressee ; the photo is by his father who is the postcard’s sender.) 

For other accounts of no less subtle precognition in Sussex, see a notable Sussex-raised precursor of the science of geochronology (Sussex Exodus of Altisonant Rats) . . .

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sussex-exodus-of-altisonant-frogs.html

and Sussex-born precursors in the parsing of the possessive pronoun in the Western demotic of Hollywood (Cold Comfort Conjugation in my Darkest Sussex) . . .
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/cold-comfort-conjugation-in-my-darkest.html

Medieval Song (1)

[ This hitherto untranscribed text is by a hand unknown and no putative attribution to any earlier scriptor should be assayed. ]

Discovered inscribed in cursiva anglicana (Middle English

and Latin) by stylus on a wax tablet. Early 14th Century.

This tabletta (or ceraculum) is in the personal possession

of Catherine Eisner who has transcribed the 

orthographical variants, with reference to The Middle English Dictionary

and to The Index to Middle English Verse;

and within the limitations of current scholarship Eisner 

believes this text to be a faithful rendering.

O lovely Mary maiden fair,

May all our hearts in faith declare

Praise for these, our mistress’s

Gentlelady courtesies.

O Holy Infant, baby fair 

Come intercede and hear our prayer

Call for these, sweet Jesus’s

Gentlechild forgivenesses.

All praise to thee, My Lady.

All praise to thee, Thy Baby.

All praise to thee, Almighty,

Deo gratias. Pray have mercy.

Detail from a 14th-century church window,
Herefordshire, England. The Christ child
holds a small bird, symbol of His coming Passion.

For a transcription of the Second of these medieval verses by an unknown hand, see:

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2020/01/medieval-verse-2-hart-there-was.html
The Third verse, in presumed chronological order, may be found here:
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2020/02/medieval-verse-3-when-lief-churl.html
The Fourth verse, which ends the series (the succeeding wax tablets are irredeemably welded together) see:
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2020/02/medieval-verse-4-praise-crown-restored.html

Ellis Island 1902

‘In America,

  wheatfields have sundials,’ claimed the

   mad boy in steerage.

                                                                                                                                        Catherine Eisner 2016

•

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

Last Things

The night expires. The last breath drawn
a mist that fades from the mirroring lawn.
I stoop to catch his words out of hearing :
A riddle? A task for his Lady’s proving?

           The Knight expires without an answer.
           Only the hieroglyphs of the snails. Only death.
           Only mene, mene, tekel, upharsin
           in lithic spittle written upon the path.

(Detail) Annonciation et Nativité
by Francesco del Cossa, 1470.
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

. . . . . Lord Alfred Douglas’s Lips

Rose leaves kept in close jars

will retain their scent

for one hundred years

although so dried up

as to crumble

into dust

in the hand.

Lines Rejected by Rainer Maria Rilke

We had passed through the lens
of the looked-for garden
and instead of the pleasure-grounds
found waterfalls drowning
how darkly the roses . . . 

and all our old certainties . . .

           ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Von Rainer Maria Rilke verworfene Zeilen

Und endlich war er im Visiere: 
Der Garten, der ersehnte, 
lag vor unserm Blick. 
Doch, ach, statt 
weicher Wonne-Wiesen 
nur Katarakte 
wilder Wasserfälle, 
die, ach, die Rosen 
jäh ertränkten 

ertränkten jäh, 
was sicher wir geglaubt.