On John Betjeman

[angelophile]

Somewhat randomly, during rehearsals for the play I'm doing, I've been flicking through the books left in the rehearsal room during stretches when I'm not on stage and I've gone and got myself addicted to John Betjeman, thanks to the poetry collection there. Possibly just re-addicted, since I've always loved him (who couldn't warm to someone who described themselves in Who's Who as a "poet and hack"), but I'd forgotten so much of his work. Such a way with words. No wonder he was Poet Laureate and knighted. A wonderful character.

One particular poem's stuck in my head, namely "Death In Leamington":

She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev'ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa

Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work'd it
Were dead as the spoken word.

And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
And the things were alone with theirs.

She bolted the big round window,
She let the blinds unroll,
She set a match to the mantle,
She covered the fire with coal.

And "Tea!" she said in a tiny voice
"Wake up! It's nearly five"
Oh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,
Half dead and half alive.

Do you know that the stucco is peeling?
Do you know that the heart will stop?
From those yellow Italianate arches
Do you hear the plaster drop?

Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,
At the gray, decaying face,
As the calm of a Leamington ev'ning
Drifted into the place.

She moved the table of bottles
Away from the bed to the wall;
And tiptoeing gently over the stairs
Turned down the gas in the hall.

And also, because it's beautiful in its simplicity, "In A Bath Teashop":

"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
Let us hold hands and look."
She such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop's ingle-nook.