- Jul 9, 2010
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Surely there's one here, a thread just for random poetry you're interested or angry or feel something about. I always like going online and scouring poets I've never heard of or just trying to dig something up from someone you like.
I'm planning on going overseas sometime this year and heeding my dad's advice, I'm really trying to read as much by as many writer's from the places I'll likely go. I couldn't stop thinking of this one, The Cockney Amorist, by John Betjeman. I'm really interested in place and always have been. This is one of my favourite poems ever and the incongruous fact that I'm in hot, summer Perth and not dull, frigid London probably adds something to that...
The Cockney Amorist
Oh when my love, my darling,
You’ve left me here alone,
I’ll walk the streets of London
Which once seemed all our own.
The vast suburban churches
Together we have found:
The ones which smelt of gaslight
The ones in incense drown’d;
I’ll use them now for praying in
And not for looking round.
No more the Hackney Empire
Shall find us in its stalls
When on the limelit crooner
The thankful curtain falls,
And soft electric lamplight
Reveals the gilded walls.
I will not go to Finsbury Park
The putting course to see
Nor cross the crowded High Road
To Williamsons’ to tea,
For these and all the other things
Were part of you and me.
I love you, oh my darling,
And what I can’t make out
Is why since you have left me
I’m somehow still about.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/feb/25/poetry.johnbetjeman1
I'm planning on going overseas sometime this year and heeding my dad's advice, I'm really trying to read as much by as many writer's from the places I'll likely go. I couldn't stop thinking of this one, The Cockney Amorist, by John Betjeman. I'm really interested in place and always have been. This is one of my favourite poems ever and the incongruous fact that I'm in hot, summer Perth and not dull, frigid London probably adds something to that...
The Cockney Amorist
Oh when my love, my darling,
You’ve left me here alone,
I’ll walk the streets of London
Which once seemed all our own.
The vast suburban churches
Together we have found:
The ones which smelt of gaslight
The ones in incense drown’d;
I’ll use them now for praying in
And not for looking round.
No more the Hackney Empire
Shall find us in its stalls
When on the limelit crooner
The thankful curtain falls,
And soft electric lamplight
Reveals the gilded walls.
I will not go to Finsbury Park
The putting course to see
Nor cross the crowded High Road
To Williamsons’ to tea,
For these and all the other things
Were part of you and me.
I love you, oh my darling,
And what I can’t make out
Is why since you have left me
I’m somehow still about.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/feb/25/poetry.johnbetjeman1