In The Year Of My Death

Friend arrived last night q much merriment and a leeeetle booze knocked back. There will be more today. Have we a plan for the day? I don't think so beyond the excellent restaurant this evening. We might go for a walk if folk don't want to drive. I suspect little will occur before that, but it all comes down to weather and hangover levels.

I'm the first up. Coffee's on, dishwasher's on, laundry's on, pussycats fed, all I need to do is go make myself presentable. Any minute now.

The world is always better with mates around.

This old poem came back to me.


In the year of my death,
You had croup and your mother
Made the last priest in Troy pray for your lungs.
I left you both
In a cave on a mountainside
While my treasure ships rolled heavy
And a knife waited at home.

In the year of my death
Carcassonne; that was interesting.
You mowed me down, of course,
Screaming about heretics
I recalled knowledge of swords
Before I had a womb
But all I had time to do was scream back.

In the year of my death,
The good ship De Montfort: I counted you in
Chained profit, somehow with diphtheria
That killed you all and lost me my deposit.
Landed in Liverpool with sweet nothing
But a blade some strumpet turned on me
Yelling I had abandoned her.

In the year of my death
Hamburg: I was a doctor
A pulmonary specialist with a patient
When I heard the humming overhead
You reached my home, I never did again.
Oh, I didn't know you then
But I knew your work.

In the year of my death
I break the mad wheel,
Bored with this, and you,
You must be sick of me!
I pick the tree to root around my bones
And sweep the air so that a world
Of strangers and you wake, forget me, breathe.

It's pretty old now. This morning I like it, flaws and all.