By the docks in a number of cities,
where the sailors make short-time friends,
the woman with a hat for a handbag
clacks needles with two pointed ends.
Her pye-dog cocks an eye at a policeman,
and lays an effluvious egg
- for fear of a night-stick or truncheon -
he wisely demurs with a leg.
She's friends with the local pick-pockets,
for hers contain only lint,
a page from the Book of Mormon
and a fragment of Polo mint.
She talks and it sounds like a poem,
by Blake out of doggerel verse,
she sings when she sees a nun's habit
and dances on sight of a hearse.
She dies one day of exposure,
or something no-one should get,
needles fall silent in mourning
and the policeman collects on his bet.
The Woman with a Hat for a Handbag
Published by Ewan on February 19, 2010 - 14:51
from the ABC set
from the ABC set
Comments
Skunk | February 19, 2010 - 14:58
You've met my sister? Small world...
Ewan | February 19, 2010 - 17:40
Skunky, old fellow, I am most intimate with your sister, Petronella La Pew: a fragrant woman of musk-ular tendencies. A creature less likely to have a hat for a handbag I cannot imagine!
wandelaar | February 19, 2010 - 20:00
Good one!
Sooz006 | February 19, 2010 - 20:16
Lovely, very Dickensian London apart from the mention of mormons (did we have them in London then, surely in fewer numbers if there were) and polos be it then orv now it's still lovely imagery.
Anna Marie | February 19, 2010 - 22:54
I liked. Great visuals created
Ewan | February 20, 2010 - 08:11
Sadly Sooz, from Limassol to Lagos, there are places like this all over the world today, and people with similar stories.
littleditty | February 20, 2010 - 14:04
A hat for a handbag- i like this lady -I knew a hatforahandbag lady under the branco bridge in Tenerife, where i would think as i passed in the daytime at least it is warm, trouble is the change in temperature at night. Very visual poem, and nice rhymes xx