Fairytale of New York written by Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan

Shane MacGowan

Verse 1: Shane MacGowan]

It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank
An old man said to me, "Won't see another one"
And then he sang a song, 'The Rare Old Mountain Dew'
I turned my face away and dreamed about you

[Verse 2: Shane MacGowan]

Got on a lucky one, came in eighteen-to-one
I've got a feeling this year's for me and you
So, Happy Christmas, I love you, baby
I can see a better time when all our dreams come true

[Verse 3: Kirsty MacColl]

They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you, it's no place for the old
When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me Broadway was waiting for me

[Verse 4: Kirsty MacColl & Shane MacGowan & Together]

You were handsome, you were pretty, queen of New York City
When the band finished playing, they howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks, they were singing
We kissed on a corner, then danced through the night

[Chorus: Shane Macgowan & Kirsty MacColl]

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing, "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas Day

[Verse 5: Kirsty MacColl & Shane MacGowan]

You're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy faggot
Happy Christmas, your arse, I pray God it's our last

[Chorus: Shane Macgowan & Kirsty MacColl]

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing, "Galway Bay"
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas Day

[Verse 6: Kirsty MacColl & Shane MacGowan]

"I could have been someone" Well, so could anyone
You took my dreams from me when I first found you
I kept them with me, babe, I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone, I've built my dreams around you

[Outro: Shane Macgowan & Kirsty MacColl]

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing, "Galway Bay"
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas Day

Click here for a detailed analysis of the lyrics

And click here for my tribute to Shane MacGowan

The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

 

Rudyard Kipling

The Way through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling


They shut the road through the woods
      Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
      And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
      Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
      And the thin anemones.
      Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
      And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
      Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
      Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
      Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
      And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
      Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
      As though they perfectly knew
      The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

'Not Adlestrop' by Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse

Not Adlestrop, no - besides the name
hardly matters. Nor did I languish in June heat.
Simply, I stood, too early, on the empty platform,
and the wrong train came in slowly, surprised, stopped.
Directly facing me, from a window,
a very, very pretty girl leaned out.

When I, all instinct,
stared at her, she, all instinct, inclined her head away
as if she'd divined the much married life in me,
or as if she might spot, up platform,
some unlikely familiar.

For my part, under the clock, I continued
my scrutiny with unmitigated pleasure.
And she knew it, she certainly knew it, and would
not glance at me in the silence of not Adlestrop.

Only when the train heaved noisily, only
when it jolted, when it slid away, only then,
daring and secure, she smiled back at my smile,
and I, daring and secure, waved back at her waving.
And so it was, all the way down the hurrying platform
as the train gathered atrocious speed
towards Oxfordshire or Gloucestshire.

Click here for a line by line analysis of the poem

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

 

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Click here for a link to Richard Burton reading the poem. I love his reading. It's brilliance is all held in that first word, 'Yes.'
It's all there in the casual and off hand way he says 'yes'. He says 'yes' as if it's unimportant, almost as if he's half paying attention to the unknown speaker of his unknown question. And of course that completely goes to the very core of this poem.  

Edward Thomas

Bedtime Story by Jeffrey Whitmore

 

“Careful, honey, it’s loaded,” he said, re-entering the bedroom.


Her back rested against the headboard. “This for your wife?”


“No, too chancy. I’m hiring a professional.”


“How about me?”


He smirked. “Cute. But who’d be dumb enough to hire a lady hit man?”


She wet her lips, sighting along the barrel.


“Your wife.”




I read this 55 word short story so long ago. Occasionally I go looking for it on the internet.
Today I was doing some work with students doing 55 word stories. Again I went searching for it. And eventually I found it.


At last.

W B Yeats and Bedford Park, London. A Short Introduction

W. B. Yeats

Here's a short video introducing W B Yeats and Bedford Park where he lived when he first came to London. View Video

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven by W B Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Click here for a 17 minute programme about The Bedford Park Artwork Project. It concludes with a reading of the poem, 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' by W. B. Yeats, read by Ciaran Hinds.

Click here for a link to the W B Yeats Bedford Park Artwork Project