7 Middagh

Benji and Carson

As the bombs began to fall on London

Were down by the Brooklyn Bridge

Drinking a toast to the moments

They had written that day

Wystan was wrestling

Over interesting passages in Henry James

In which it said

The commentator and the man are not the same

They drank in the bar

And wrote in the parlour

They could not hear the bombs

In the Northern Heights

They were too far away

To see those fearsome lights

But they felt them

Gypsy did striptease

While the editor was fed up with her habits

Always naked to breakfast

And cooked up a cocktail

That was two parts whiskey

One part benzedrine tablets

They drank in the bar

And wrote in the parlour

They could not hear the bombs

In the Northern Heights

They were too far away

To see those fearsome lights

But they felt them

And their dreams were

Bright colored brilliant

The kind of dreams where

Poems by Wilfred Owen

Could be read in reverse

And spare the seed of Europe one by one

And glasses of sherry

Were not necessary

To make the days more manageable

With London calling them cowards

They could not hear the bombs

In the Northern Heights

They were too far away

To see those fearsome lights

But they felt them

But modern's a stillbirth

That was born before it died in 1939

Or was it '45?

And we've been attending

The longest saddest funeral

In history without even knowing