In Lord Bryon’s House
By Noo
- 1183 reads
In Nottingham we stayed in mad dog Byron’s house
His ancestral home
Two hundred and seventy years before he was born
My son called him Lord Bryon
And we reckoned it suited the hotel’s ersatz nature
We oohed at the ceilings’ ornateness
We aahed at the mirrors and slipper bath
My son wrapped himself in a throw
Sherlock reclining
Clicking his fingers
Proclaiming he’d become
Lord Bryon
Mad, bad and dangerous to know
I told him
What he could do
With his orders to
Pass Pringles
To pull off his boots
He told me it was what Lord Bryon would have wanted.
At night I slept badly on thin, hotel pillows –
Too low for one, too high for two
And dreamt of Lord Byron
Walking the room
His clubfoot dragging
Light of wit, heavy of gait
I hoped to wake in the morning
Fresh with inspiration
Clubfoot channelled
But instead I read about Lemmy
On my phone and just
Felt sad
We went to Nottingham Castle
Where I learnt they painted alabaster
For saints
My son said he reckoned
The past must have been dead uncomfortable
In Byron’s Brasserie (he so would have dug that)
The poetry was wrong in painstaking lettering
On beautiful walls
Though became
Thought in
Though the heart be still as loving
Raven tress
Raven trees
She walks in beauty, like the night
But, we’ll go no more a roving
It’s what Lord Bryon would have wanted.
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Comments
Nice one Noo
Made me smile. A nice poetic vignette, and I like the juxtapositions between the romantic associations of Byron and the references to more mundane matters like hotel pillows and Pringles. Also thought the reference to Lemmy gave it a neat but sad contemporary twist.
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Don Juan to dun rovin'.
Don Juan to dun rovin'. Although it's not here, I'm left with a boy in a slipper bath - sweet and bossy.
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