Chain Alley/Iffley Road Ballad

What do you fear, my young man and handsome,
Clashing with an engine,
With a nineteen-sixties hardback in your hand?

Sure you fear ink won’t kiss you
They can’t but forget you,
Less than Arnochan’s sixties old tome of your hand.

Further do you fear, o young man and courtly,
So hurrying curtly,
Your substitute scarf round the bones of your neck,

They cannot but scrape such hashed frames of the tarmac,
Where no countenance breathes,
And none can infer your best drape on that neck.

Perhaps you are fearing, straight young man and hurried,
Her wistful judgement,
That she can’t but, while straightening the greyening light

Straiten from her head what might have been as well,
And were you even it,
Youth stiffening from possible light?

Then say for us too that you fear, lorn young man
Lettering services,
How will the wake invitations spill out?

Where will the space be and how firm the driving,
If they shine, will the mourners enshadow your time?
Can a tightrope bloat into a rout?

Don’t dwell in your blood on the fear, good young man
That the devil is idle, as veiled and viled
Indolent, indifferent, and not of your set –

For God will not spare you and no soul will swathe you,
As the driver is cautioned
And self-regard waxes round your heart in jet.