Ken Follett's Lucy Poem by Gayathri Seetharam

Ken Follett's Lucy
-Gayathri B. Seetharam
I am of womanly disposition
With a single minded devotion to my family
And a ferocious ambition in the direction of my work
But I have a chink in my armour
And I fear that this may be the reason
That both men and women have lost their respect for me
Or because in some ways, I am a stronger woman and a stronger scientist and engineer
Who has found success in the arts and literature also
But if the winning streak lasted until Dec 2002
It seems like my cryptocurrency cannot be cashed for actual money,
Leastways not as of yet;

But I have to count my blessings
For there are worse things than success with promised pay that seems to never materialize
And this brings me to Ken Follett's heroine, Lucy, in his book, Eye of the Needle
The husband is very like Lady Chatterley's husband in D.H. Lawrence's book
And ingrate who is not apologetic for his crippled state
And she is saddled to him who is not nice to her;

Lucy rescues unsuspectingly, a Nazi spy, The Needle,
Who makes love to her sexually starved body
She gives him shelter and feeds him
While protecting her young son from the harsh realities of life;

When she finds out that her lover is a spy
Who is determined to sabotage an English mission
She rallies her wits and courage around to foil the Nazi spy's plans
And the movie version with a fine performance by Kate Nelligan as Lucy
And Donald Sutherland as the ruthless spy, is very good
But I would like to end with this stanza, an adaption of a Bob Dylan song:

Oh, where have you been, my blue eyed son
O, where have you been, my darling young one
I have stumbled on the dark side of a lover
I have walked and I have crawled through this unhappy marriage
I have stepped in the middle of enemy plans
I have been exposed to danger from a friend turned enemy
I have stuck 3 fingers inside the socket of an electric bulb to protect my country
And it's a hard rain, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard rain
And it's a hard rain's gonna fall
And after the storm, there comes the calm
And flowers and grains out of the ground.