Letitia Poem by David Lewis Paget

Letitia, you with the marble thighs
Have you found the will to roam,
Letitia, you with the gravel eyes
Are you going to go back home?
You stood too long at the garden gate
And let every passer see,
That the heart beneath your breast was still,
That you had no care for me!

I fell in love when I saw you first
At the waterfront in Greece,
There at the back of an antique shop
Where you stood, so pensively,
You only wore a shift of lawn
That the sun shone brightly through,
I knew no life could be complete
If I lived it, without you.

I had to smuggle you out of there
In the back of a grocer’s truck,
You didn’t have any papers, nor
A passport, just my luck!
So we caught a tramp from Athens
And you gazed out at the sea,
Watching the foam-flecked breakers break,
Disport, so wild and free.

Your smile was part of your mystery,
Your eyes had hidden it too,
I ached to learn of your history
Hid deep in the heart of you,
But you had no words to comfort me
Your secrets were your own,
And all the lovers you ever touched
Have gone to their graves alone.

They say you stand on a distant shore
And smile at the turning tide,
Next to a stone Prometheus
Like a bridegroom and a bride,
I only wish that you’d cared for me
Before they sent you home,
But your marble heart is beating free
Though you’ve turned my heart to stone.

25 April 2013