(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.

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