(chosen by David for Friday 3rd April)
This is a poem about alienation - the sense of being an outsider, looking in on the world through a separating pane of isolation.
We were throwing out small-talk
On the smoke-weary air,
When the girl with the squeaker
Came passing each chair.
She was wearing a white dress,
Her paper-hat was a blue
Crown with a red tassel,
And to every man who
Glanced up at her, she leant over
And blew down the hole,
So the squeaker inflated
And began to unroll.
She stopped them all talking
with this trickery,
And she didn't leave out anyone
Until she came to me.
I looked-up and she met me
With a half-teasing eye
And she took a mild breath and
Went carefully by.
And with cold concentration
To the next man she went,
And squawked out the instrument
To its fullest extent.
And whether she passed me
Thinking that it would show
Too much favour to mock me
I never did know -
Or whether her witholding
Was her cruelty,
And it was that she despised me,
I couldn't quite see -
So it could have been discretion,
And it could have been disgust,
But it was quite unequivocal,
And suffer it I must;
All I know was : she passed me,
Which I did not expect
- And I'd never so craved for
Some crude disrespect.