Girl on the No. 13 Bus

I’m very grateful to An Sionnach for publishing a group of my poems, in particular a five-page sprawler about County Wicklow: magazine details here. Here’s one of the group. This poem is an unprincipled mugging of a French original by Max Jacob, I might mention.

O majorette, flexible friend,
leggy lass, o legs without end!
legging it at half past nine
for the bus from Orchard Park to town.
Don’t you miss out girl, I ask you,
on the ride now pulling out of Tesco.
Your swelling heart does karaoke
to its own beats for getting lucky,
and off you speed into the night
that pulses to the Humber’s tide;
and though I’m not about to wallow
I’ve longed too long already, willow.
People of Drypool, Drypool folk!
promise me someone gives a fuck.
Bus-stop queues, go whistle Dixie,
wait for the next one or get a taxi.
When next you see her flick her mane
she’ll have crossed the finishing line
with the yellow jersey on her chest
to join the boy that she loves best,
her toyboy and our bouncing kid.
She may live here but she comes from Brid.
This girl don’t go off on one neither.
Look at those lips. That’s why I bother.