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Peter Austin
Once Is Enough
[Inspired by a Graham Greene short story.]
To explore more of Peter Austin’s formalist poetry, follow the link to his new pamphlet Once Is Enough,
available now from O:JA&L’s Buttonhhook Press.
ONE CHILLY DAY in spring
They sat beside each other in a park,
Unspeaking, till a pigeon’s broken wing
(A passing lout had kicked it for a lark)
Prevailed on him to wring
Its neck. With forehead creased,
He said, ‘I should have spared you.’ ‘From its pain?
You did. It was too late to stop the beast
Who mauled it,’ she replied. He shook his cane:
‘Our parks were once policed!’
They settled down to chat
Like old friends, till the sun went down. Said he,
Rising, ‘I don’t like leaving unchewed fat.
What about dinner? Would you honour me?’
‘Yes, thank you; I’d like that.’
Under the pool of light,
He saw the wedding ring, observed her twist
It. ‘Married?’ ‘Yes; and you?’ ‘She’s out tonight.
I’m for it, if she smells our little tryst.’
‘I’d rather run than fight.’
‘And I, but where…?’ They chose
Two gateaux, and the coffee pot came by.
He paid the bill; she thanked him, then they rose.
‘May I escort…?’ ‘Please, no. You’ve seen love die;
Once is enough, God knows.’
About the writer:
PETER AUSTIN is a retired Professor of English who spends his time writing stage plays for young people and poetry for adults. Of his second collection of verse, X. J. Kennedy (winner of the Robert Frost award for lifetime contribution to poetry) wrote: ‘Austin must be one of the best living exponents of the fine old art of rhyming and scanning in English’.
Image: The Small Coffee Cup by James Ensor (1860-1949). Oil on canvas. 27.5 x 22 cm. 1880. Public domain.
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