A country town whose main street is the main highway.
One thousand people, shops, a garage, one hotel,
And Jessie importuning travellers who stop.
Playing up gentility and sounding like the Queen.
A woman of good breeding no-one here can doubt.
English. Educated. That posh accent’s not put on.
How comes she to be here, a world away from home
So down-at-heel, now local legend, laughing-stock?
The answer’s simple. Alcohol. It rules her life.
A prohibition order bans her from the pub
So strangers are dragooned to buy drink for this lady
Whose upbringing, she says, precludes her entering bars.
I’ve been inside her house, called in to fix her range.
The filth! Just indescribable. The floor a midden.
Food, newspapers, crockery, embedded in the dirt.
History for future avid archaeologists.
How can she cook, stay healthy, with no surface clean,
With week-old dishes in the sink, food toxins everywhere?
Long unwashed clothes, massed debris, leave no place to sit
Yet she still looks respectable out seeking gulls.
Does it matter that her decline’s self inflicted?
I, for one, grieve for her, seeing in this ruin
Not ludicrous pretence but shadows of a past.
Pale remnants of good breeding not yet leached away