FIDELITY

She was just one of the gang,
A good lay-
Woman but a saint, bless her!.
The Widow, we lads called her.
Did the rounds for a bit of holy communion.
Been coming for years
To the caves
Long before you trotted out of my poke.
This time it had been a while and a while.
I had forgotten her moniker.

Those were the days her boy was giving grief,
Little Augustinus, Ach du liebe!
He’ll break my heart yet, that son of many tears,
Up to no good down in wicked Carthage,
Into bondage by now
Ill be bound.

I wanted to introduce her to you.
Piggles this is….
…It’s Monica!
Yes, of course, it was on the tip of my tongue.
Speaking of which, said the widow
Guess whats all the rage down the Casablanca?

She rushed straight to the rush-mat and the point,
Knelt at my feet.
Me, I wanted none of it. A holy law
Had invented itself. Somehow,
You had already become my first lady
And your piggy eyes
Were watching every twitch.
No, Monica, no!

The Widow needn’t have worried.
Little Augustine came up smelling of roses.
Six weeks later they’d made him
Not only saint, bless him!,
But bishop.

These days, when you are so dead
And no-one comes knocking,
(O Ali! I should have drained my glass
before it was taken from me.)
I think of the Widow as a time I never used
And could have done with.

GOD HELP THE SAINT FOR WHOM THE PIGLING DOES NOT SQUEAK

The Devil, who envies all that’s good,
Knowing I wouldn’t be expecting
A lap-dancing pigling,
Smuggled in hips and lipsticks
Bosoms &co.
And from somewhere unlikely,
A long blonde wig.
He had you trottering about
on four-inch heels.
You always wanted to please, Piggles.
Diobolically transmogrified
you were my salami Salome,
my marzipan Messalina,
Plump and pink.
Seven veils was it?I wasn’t counting.

You swayed like a pork belly-dancer,
I was not unimpressed. I was sore tempted.
You threw your trotters round my saintly knees:
I love you, I love you, I love you,
The Devil’s karaoke in my ear.
The illusion was complete and
I, damned-near damned,
Was fooled stiff.
All would have been lost if you had not sort of grunted.
Your high pitched grunt, squeak, squeal
no deep-throated houri ever made.
You put me on my guard.
The scales fell
You were yourself again and I was mine
I was a saint. You were the pig in the wig
Whose dancing nobody wanted.
The Devil departed roaring
The way he does.

Whats left of you, Piggles, and your unwanted dance
now you are so dead?
A dusty veil, your pretty G-string,
These blonde locks.

THE MACHINE

Where was I now? Ah yes, I must insist
Wherever I was, I wasn’t turking you.
What saint would?
Although you were so pink and curvy cute.
But you and I rushed onto my rush mat
With bounce enough for
The four-and-twenty pet budgies
Which we did not possess.
As for the screw? You hated the machine
But I was proud of it
And folk would come for miles
To see our telamons
And to watch Edward, our sad donkey,
power old Archimedes.
You hated it a lot
Since that fell day
When, soaking wet and dizzy,
You spiralled up into
The irrigation channels.
Fish would have swum,
Budgies would have flown away
But pigs can neither swim nor fly.
They say the latter is a good job too,
And they are right.
I think you saw your Mum in that machine
Straight as a sow’s tail with teeth that nip
And with a bent for sitting on your head.
And where was I the while?
Knocking back the Guinness here
With Columba,
A saint, God bless him!,
And other holy Teagues at Ali’s bar,
Harping on to the Irish, stout chaps,
About your rubber bum
And hope-you-dont-mind ear.
(O Ali, take away this foaming brew,
Its far too black! Have you no paler ale?)
While you were being screwed.

THE HERMITAGE, SINAI

Hell, well, what is this all about?
I mean life, Piggles.
There's something fetching in a home address
Which saint or poet
Or pigling has immortalized,
Conscious that queues of silly pigrims (sic)
Might one day just make the effort.
So here, in Sinai, at the Hermitage,
I lay your curly trail
And mine.
Would that be arrogance, presumption or simply bounce?
Here you ran snuffling like you were truffling.
I knew that you were searching madly for
Your lost long Mummy and not finding her.
Not surprising I thought, for she long had been
Transumed to sausages and chops and ham
Black-puddings, streaky-bacon and the rest,
And not surprising for she long had been
Eaten mostly.
I loved you maugre your ugly Nubian snout,
Your piggy eyes that proved you were no film-star,
Your torn ear, hope you don’t mind
Me mentioning that ear again,
Your hairy nostrils and your rubber bum.
I kissed you and I held you in my arms.
I took you to my bed, but, let’s be clear,
No saint I know would ever turk a pig.
Nor did I neither.

TROPHY

I knew from the first
That you had trouble with words.
It was what I expected from a pigling.
When you saw the lion you squeaked
Or squealed. It was enough.
I understood.
You had no wish to be diminished.
You skipped across the desert and it was
Once more a streak of sunset on the Nile.
What saved you this time? Maybe a stray sheep,
Lions preferring mutton to pork chops
Any day of the week, or so I’m told.

Later I picked up the horny skull
Of some old sheep,
Killed by your lion or wasted by disease?
Was this a trophy, Piggles,
Or an atrophy?

THE NIP

You were lucky not to have snuffed it
Earlier.
The way your Mum kept sitting on your head.
Was there no creep to keep you
Safe from those clumsy, mumsy hindquarters?
But she’s dead now. Her hams are dead and eaten.
Mostly.
I might observe, Piggles,
Death seems to run in your family,
Gallop even.
Then there’s that torn ear,
You don’t, I hope, mind me going on about it,
Now that both you and Mummy are so dead.
A mother should not nip her little-ones.
A mother is for nipples not for nips
And those peevish pigs’ teeth
Might have settled your hash,
cooked your goose, made mincemeat of you.
As Adulf said, das ist ein Sauerei!
Jawohl, Adulf, mein Freund!

SAINT BOTULF

Adulf, a saint, bless him! came along.
Sieg heil, Adulf! He did not smile.
Darf ich vorstellen brother Botulf,
My brother, brother,
And by my brother, I really mean
My brother, not just any old brother, brother.
Some name him brother Botolph, others brother Botulf
A saint may choose, mein Freund, out from UK.
More English than the English, these days.
Done the Nile, done the pyramids,
He wanted not to miss
Tony and his telamons

Ach, wo! but who’s this little swine?
I introduced you to them.
O what a tight, rubbery ball of joy!
You wobbled on perfect, pink,
Allthewayuptoyourbelly, trotters.
Plumper
Than ever you were before,
Your piggy eyes bright as a squashed glow worm,
Bright as a Pembroke scholar,
And the torn pig’s ear where your mother nipped you
Smiled in welcome.

I say! Really! Gosh! What a jolly nice pig!
Botulf swayed on his English legs and swooned.
You were just too pink and precious,
Just too elegant and Nubian,
Meeting you was
Just too much.