I Only Have Eyes For You! Poem by David Lewis Paget

The store had been closed for a month or more,
The Receivers opened the door,
To auction off all the fittings there,
Whatever stood on the floor,
There were counters, mirrors, plenty of stock,
The tills and the rubbish bins,
It was all going under the hammer,
Even a line of mannequins.

When John McRogers happened to pass
He heard the clamour inside,
He peered on in through the window glass
And he watched the human tide,
The bids were coming from everywhere
From phones, and spread through the store,
So he wandered into the human mass
And made his way from the door.

He wandered along the vacant aisles
Saw everything piled in heaps,
There wasn’t much of a bidding war
So everything went quite cheap,
He wondered if he should make a bid
Was there anything there for him?
His eyes then came to rest on a girl,
A fabulous mannequin.

She stood in a line of eight or nine
But caught his eye from the start,
He thought that she had the bluest eyes
Of all, and she stood apart!
She must have been all of six foot six
With a tapering line to the waist,
And breasts of promise and silken legs
A woman of style and taste.

He put in a nervous bid when she
Was auctioned along the line,
But nobody put in a counter bid,
And he thought to himself, ‘She’s mine! ’
He had a courier pick her up
And take her straight to his home,
Then stood her up in his office, where
He could savour her there, alone.

She hadn’t a scrap of clothing on
They’d taken it off when she went,
He tried to avert his eyes, she showed
No sign of embarrassment,
Her hands hung limply down at her side
No effort to cover up,
But her eyes had followed him round the room,
Whenever he’d start, or stop.

‘I’m going to call you Jennifer, ’
He said to himself, out loud,
Then sensed she shuddered and straightened up
In a movement that seemed quite proud,
His wife had left him the year before
For a keeper, down at the zoo,
So now he said, and in fact he swore,
‘I only have eyes for you! ’

‘I only have eyes for you, my dear,
My Jennifer from Le Trée,
I’ll always cherish you near me here
When I work out here, all day,
We’ll spend our evenings here in the warm
With a single desk-top light,
And in the gloom of this little room
You might even come to life! ’

He left her naked, stood by his desk,
She had an erotic air,
The wig she wore flowed over her back
Brunette, but the lights were fair,
He worked each night at his desk in gloom
Lit only by one small stand,
And every now and again he’d rouse,
Reach over and touch her hand.

The hand was cold, plastic and hard
And it couldn’t return a thing,
Until one night, he opened a box
And slipped on a wedding ring,
He worked away for an hour or so
Til he’d filled out a batch of forms,
Then reached unconsciously out for her hand
To find it was soft and warm.

He looked up into her shining face
And noticed, to his surprise,
Her cheeks had softened, her lips were red
And a lovelight shone from her eyes,
He stood and reached for her willing form
And she did what he wanted to,
But an urgent message tugged at his brain,
‘I only have eyes for you! ’

‘I only have eyes for you, ’ she thought
And beamed that into his head,
He never would leave that office again,
His friends soon thought he was dead.
They came in force, broke into his house
And found that he’d really gone,
‘There’s only a couple of mannequins here,
But one of them looks like John! ’

4 November 2013