C Richard Miles Poems

I long to wangle wonga for a dongle;
I can't hang on any longer unattached.
Don't get me wrong, a struggle, long and strong'll
Mingle with my wrangle to be hatched.
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Chewing the cud unperturbed by the world in the heat’s haze,
Up in the meadow tread red-polled, old, dun cows and brown cows,
Jerseys and Guernseys combining with Holsteins, all fine beasts.
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A soft spring day and, from the bus at Cray
Upon my left, I look up Langstrothdale
Past primroses, all lemon pale, to where,
Through silver birch in limestone pavement’s grikes,
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What will I write of Autumn? I will write
Of wind that strips the twig and bares the branch
And cleaves from trees the leaves that cleaved on tight
All Summer long. I’ll say how they have lost
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Just let me wander now among the quiet folk
There, in the grassy graveyard, up the winding hill
Above the sleeping village, where they do not speak.
But, in their day, these quiet folk were never still
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And if they said to me I could just write Four
Last songs, composed like Richard Strauss,
What would this other Richard score?
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Though imitation’s the sincerest form of flattery
Why was my situation tearful and all jittery
When plagiarism struck me with its keen-barbed dart
And plunged uncaringly right in my heart?
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November, and cold rain
Swamped silver flat meadow
Where cattle summer-stood
Such short time ago.
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I will eat that plum;
I will.
It’s sitting there, desolate
In my lunchbox
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