Don't just read them. Read them out loud (even if quietly and to yourself). Executive

I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner; I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina. In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill The maitres d'hotel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.

You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know, I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.R.O. Essentially, I integrate the current export drive And basically I'm viable from ten o'clock till five.

For vital off-the-record work - that's talking transport-wise - I've a scarlet Aston-Martin - and does she go? She flies! Pedestrians and dogs and cats, we mark them down for slaughter. I also own a speedboat which has never touched the water.

She's built of fibre-glass, of course. I call her 'Mandy Jane' After a bird I used to know - No soda, please, just plain - And how did I acquire her? Well, to tell you about that And to put you in the picture, I must wear my other hat.

I do some mild developing. The sort of place I need Is a quiet country market town that's rather run to seed A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire - I fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.

And if some Preservationist attempts to interfere A 'dangerous structure' notice from the Borough Engineer Will settle any buildings that are standing in our way - The modern style, sir, with respect, has really come to stay.

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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.

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Loneliness

The last year's leaves are on the beech: The twigs are black; the cold is dry; To deeps byond the deepest reach The Easter bells enlarge the sky. O ordered metal clatter-clang! Is yours the song the angels sang? You fill my heart with joy and grief - Belief! Belief! And unbelief... And, though you tell me I shall die, You say not how or when or why.

Indifferent the finches sing, Unheeding roll the lorries past: What misery will this year bring Now spring is in the air at last? For, sure as blackthorn bursts to snow, Cancer in some of us will grow, The tasteful crematorium door Shuts out for some the furnace roar; But church-bells open on the blast Our loneliness, so long and vast.

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