David Lewis Paget Poems

I’ve walked at your ruins
To seek out your history,
Charted the runes of you
Stone upon stone,
...

‘Why do you tear at
My towers and my turrets,
My walls and my pillars
My barrs and my beach;
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We overplayed and underplayed our parts
And paid the price; we went our separate ways
For me to think of you, and you of me
Some part of all our long and restless days.
...

Would Cook, I wonder, ever have dreamt
Of seventeen eighty-eight,
Of convict ships and dismal cargoes
Rushing onward to their fate?
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We touch things we see not
And know things we know not
And dream of sweet things that
We’ve not set in store,
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Ah! … Ah! … What is Man?
The sad slick-sliver of the long quicksand,
The flash-burst crackle of the lightning, forking
Or two young daughters of the evening, talking.
...

Raglan Roc was a Warlock, and
He lived up on Mandrake Hill,
Up where the witches gathered
Once a month, for a coven spell,
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To what degree does love survive
No matter what it cost,
Can man escape lost love alive
Once it is truly lost?
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They laid her out on a plastic sheet
Where she stared unseeingly,
With nothing to cover her naked form
When they said, ‘Come in and see.'
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We lived right up on a grassy bluff
That looked down on the sea,
In a tiny cottage, fit for two,
Just Arabelle and me.
...