Three burning castles shall no longer illumine
my Dublin dreams, nor will splintering glass
awake me, nor heavy knocks at the shuddering door.
THUNK
Sweety-pie, my Dove, my Love,
Pleeze, pu-leeze be true … ting!
Angelina, Angelina ...
THUNK-THUNK
carried her chest to Argentina …
both of them, by God, bazooms,
and a spare one in the baggage
THUNK-THUNK-THUNK
What?? But … but that’s outrageous!
You can’t possibly expect people to believe …
Omigod, you have the photographs?
All right, all right, I’ll do it.
Herr Hitler this is Senor Franco
No doubt you will wish to discuss the War
over a refreshing cup of Irish Coffee?
I’m in love with love and loveliness
myself. I cannot, Lord, quite help it:
Three sugars?
Tha buaidh air an uisge-bheath'
Tha buaidh air cha chòr e cleith
Tha buaidh air an uisge-bheath'
Gun òlainn teth is fuar i.
But you must tell me more, dear Adolf,
Well, yes, all right … Adi Baby,
Was Geli the Right Girl for you?
She was quite young, I believe?
Ahhhhh …. Hmmmm. Ah. Hmmmm.
Rotten luck she shot herself,
and now you do be with another young wan
in your big house there in the mountains?
Jolly piece, is she? Ah, that’s a step up, Adi.
She wants wha’? Kiss and make up with the Jews?
Fair play, but you can't allow that class of carry-on!
Step down hard, Adi, ship off another two million
and she's sure to come round, she'll be all over you,
sure, you'll be having to dig yourself outta her!
I crossed the frontier that evening just in time
not that the French had much going for them.
Dunno why nobody seems to like the French,
I’ve never had a problem with the bastards
apart from money, and that’s always the women,
great big fat craythurs with moustaches and abaci,
them clickety things, got up in their black bombazine,
eyes on them like gimlets, doing me bleedin head in
down in Mers-el-Kebir or wherever that place I was,
with the ocean, the Mediterranean, it must have been,
crashing on the shore, and the oul head none too steady
after those seven bottles of local plonk the night before
which I knew it was bad after the fifth, but carried on.
Soldiers, soldiers, such as we
Serve in the King’s Infanterie!
Bravely, bravely we’ll advance
Our Monarch’s fame we shall enhance!
Mister Cope do you have a hope
To shoot the head from off the Pope?
I’ve always had a fancy for that jolly little song
even as a Catholic, as if the Pope really needs me,
some oul' swarthy Italian git, I geeve you my blessssing,
my shhonn, I steek my finger up your …
That tune now, it’s so essentially English,
dunno how to express it rightly, it’s sprightly,
bouncy, so very jolly and profoundly stupid,
so English, expressing the genius of the race
who are without doubt gawky simpletons at play,
hee-hawing, dressing up with delight in silly costumes,
but hard as steel in business, harder still in war.
I do not think I love them.
I can't think of anyone who loves them.
And yet they seem to love themselves.
Hello, I am English. Do you love me?
Angelina, Angelina,
believes in things I no longer care about,
stalks me from a previous century.
God, I know, I can be stiff and boring!
Boring you, dear, when stiff, and poking fun
at the thrust of your missionary disposition:
you clutch a Bible in your left little hand
and a baby-pink (oiled & ribbed) in the other
and I fear you, my dear, your raw demand!
For now the wimp is limp,
half-hearted, garrulous,
what you might call Welsh.
Welshing.
O Darling!
You are the finest woman I have ever seen
(from a distance, anyway).
May we meet, my love, in Stephen’s Green.
