Paymaster Lieutenant Hambleton-Forester

Paymaster lieutenant Hambleton-Forester
        was a lively enough man
with a flair for attracting women.

In the War he dabbled in left wing  literary politics,
        appeared in the pages of Our Time,
and had such nice rejections from John Lehman.

He regarded the working class as the ultimate rulers,
          felt Stalin was much lied about,
and for “Second Front Now” issued frequent manifestos.

His work was done in peace in  provincial offices,
          but every evening he looked at London’s red flames
and remembered he lived in apocalyptic times.

He wore his hat at a rakish angle,
          and adopted fantasies of heroic stature,
telling his women that when his wounds were  healed

he would take his cruiser on another mission.
          Years after V.E. day he met his last  wife,
whose thighs had changed to womanhood in the years of peace.

He told her not long before he died of the great luck that had guided him
           through the dark swallowing waters.
He had entered the Baltic with sealed orders

using an anti-radar never used before.
           In command of his cruiser, the Princess Aurora
he had led the Jerries such a great dance

sunk a pocket battleship, and almost caught the Bizmark;
           but suffered  damage to his hip,
and got no medal — “commie connections

and all that of course”. Not surprisingly it came as  a great shock
           when someone came and told her, when he was dead and gone
that his war record showed he was only a paymaster.

But she’d rather imagine him standing there with tilted cap
            on the bridge of his cruiser, the Princess Aurora,
driving out into the dawn, bright eyed in his ardour.

Epithalamium for Merlin And Charlie  (30th June 2007)

By green lanes blithely they must have arrived
           — neighbours scattered across less peopled places than ours

to the country weddings of former times — and dancings, drinking
            bedding, and such like. A world of difference to ours

though ambiguous English skies
            uttered much talked-on sun and rain, much the same.

But those high-banked lanes we come on rarely now
            will do as metaphor for this wedding today.

For now two members of two old families unite
            I think of unknown yeomen, who dwelt by a white horse at Stanton St Quinton

but also of black rocks in Staffordshire, which are wild
            and isolate even today. And Hannah Taylor

grew up beside them, who broke most social rules, but I remember her
             with honour. And there is the ancient farm

by the ghost of John Harrington’s mansion at Kelston.
               And I recall Christiana Burnell, and Fred Hill

and Jean and Sarah, and those world wanderers  too, that grew up
                in the school house at Batheaston, beside that flooding stream

not least my Father. They all come in forgotten styles
                across the green lanes to meet those lesser known to me

— Doctors some of them, one I am told from the time of Queen Anne;
                 and certainly there is a doctor here today.

At all events (as of old) let there be music and dancing
                  and a new meeting at the conjunction of ancient roads.

And let there be the beginning of a new Spring
                  in the lives of two and many.