I can't remember a Roger McGough Poem...?
It was in his 1986 collection Melting into the Foreground, and was about a girl. I remember having an argument with my boyfriend, who said it was a love poem, but I felt very strongly that it was ominous and the girl was being abused. He said Roger McGough had said it wasn't about this, but he had been asked about it. Anyone know the poem? (fragments of memory are that she was lying on a bed, and that there were leaves outside the window).
Comments
hard
Hmm... MAYBE "To an Athlete Dying Young," by A. E. Housman. To An Athlete Dying Young The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears: Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's.