It Never Rains Read online

  Contents

  The Once-Empty Page

  Skywriting

  In Good Spirits

  Ex Patria

  Mensa

  Oxbridge Blues

  Half-term

  Away from You

  Good Old William

  Writer’s Block

  Executioner’s Block

  Children’s Writer

  For Want of a Better Title

  The State of Poetry

  New Poem

  Sound Advice

  Riddle

  Literary Riddle

  Acrostic

  Granny’s Favourite Anagram

  Clerihews

  Apostrophe

  A Critic Reviews the Curate’s Egg

  @thomasdylan LOL

  Epitaphs

  The After-Dinner Speaker

  The Perfect Crime

  Drop Dead Gorgeous

  Whoops!

  Deadpan Delivery

  Sign Language

  The Juggler

  Fame

  Vanity Press

  Q

  You Asked For a Poem

  Rhyming Sausages

  The Rhyming Diner

  Shearing on the Côte d’Azur

  Jellyfish Morton

  A Good Age

  Rubber Bullets

  VAT

  Windows of the Soul

  There are fascists

  Conservative Government Unemployment Figures

  The Leader

  A Brush with Authority

  Uncle Eno

  Uncle Malcolm

  Uncle Pat

  Uncle Jed

  Cousin Nell

  Cousin Daisy

  Hill of Beans

  Granny

  Quick on the Draw

  Slow on the Drawl

  Gun Love

  Moist

  Poem on the Underground

  Concourse

  Ode to the Leaf

  Autosuggestion

  Recycling

  Survivor

  Multi-Storey Car Park

  Multi-Storey Carp Ark

  Five Ways to Help You Pass Safely through a Dark Wood Late at Night

  Dear Scott

  Drinking Song

  Passive Drinking

  Missed

  The Bright Side

  Hard Times

  Depressed?

  7 a.m.

  Another Mid-Life Crisis

  My Philosophy in a Nutshell

  Worry

  Wartime Blues

  Fired with Enthusiasm

  Early-Morning Poems

  The State of the Bathroom

  The lost Lost Property Office

  The Wicked Queen’s Mirror

  The Cracked Mirror

  Rear-View Mirror

  The Dental Mirror

  What Man Wears

  Bath – Avon

  Hen Party

  Rooms for Thought

  Life is but a Tree

  When the Bough Breaks

  In Good Hands

  Ring

  Love Cycle

  Cake

  Friends of the Earth

  Palmistry

  Cane Toads

  Rainforest Gateau

  Fatal Consequences

  Global Warming

  Wiwis

  Ostrich

  Seagulls

  A 13-Amp Slug

  The Deserted Village

  Taking Stick

  Light Sleeper

  Neighbourhood Watch

  Fire Guard

  Poem against Capital Punishment

  The Concise Guide for Travellers

  The Dada Christmas Catalogue

  Punk Doll

  Lonely Hearts

  Weight-Watching

  Scintillate

  italic

  Friends, Flies and Fingernails

  Dressed for the Occasion

  Time Flies

  Said and Done

  The Proverbials

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  IT NEVER RAINS

  Roger McGough was born in Liverpool, and received the Freedom of the City in 2001. During the 1960s he was a member of the group Scaffold, which had an international hit with ‘Lily the Pink’. He presents the popular Radio 4 programme Poetry Please, and is President of the Poetry Society. He has published many books of poems for adults and children, most recently As Far As I Know (Viking, 2012), and both his Collected Poems (2003) and his Selected Poems (2006) are available in Penguin. His trio of Molière translations – Tartuffe, The Hypochondriac and The Misanthrope – have been notable successes recently in the theatre. In 2005 he received a CBE for services to literature.

  ‘Home James and don’t spare the Norses’

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Poetry

  That Awkward Age

  The Way Things Are

  Everyday Eclipses

  Collected Poems

  Selected Poems

  Penguin Modern Classics

  The Mersey Sound (With Adrian Henri and Brian Patten)

  As Far As I Know

  For Children

  Sky in the Pie

  Until I Met Dudley

  Dotty Inventions

  Bad, Bad, Cats

  Good Enough to eat

  The Bee’s Knees

  All the Best (selected poems)

  Slapstick

  An Imaginary Menagerie

  Lucky

  Theatre

  Tartuffe

  The Hypochondriac

  The Misanthrope

  Autobiography

  Said and Done

  Erratum

  For ‘heaving’ in line one read ‘heaven’

  For ‘one’ in line one read ‘eleven’

  For ‘tomato’ in line seven read ‘a martyr’

  For ‘Erratum’ in title read ‘Errata’.

  The Once-Empty Page

  This page was empty

  Its mind was blank

  It used to gaze out vacantly

  And thank the lord

  The written word

  Had given it a miss

  And then this.

  Skywriting

  Clouds are the earth’s handwriting.

  I open the sky

  And don’t like what I’m reading.

  In Good Spirits

  This icy winter’s morning I rise in good spirits.

  On all fours I exhale a long white breath

  That hangs in the air like a shimmering rope

  Under which, with arms akimbo

  And eyes ablaze, I dance the limbo.

  Ex Patria

  After supper, we move out on the veranda.

  Moths flit between lamps. We drink, think about sex

  and consider how best to wreck each other’s lives.

  At the river’s edge, the kitchen maids are washing up.

  In the age-old tradition, they slap the plates

  against the side of a rock, singing tonelessly.

  Like tiny chauffeurs, the mosquitoes will soon arrive

  and drive us home. O England, how I miss you.

  Ascot, Henley, Wimbledon. It’s the little things.

  Mensa

  ‘His parents knew he was brighter than most other children, when

  Joshua potty-trained himself at 23 months after reading

  a book on the subject.’ – Daily Telegraph

  Yes, Josh was the brightest by far

  Posh, bookish and swotty

  Six ‘A’s at thirteen, each with a star

  Went up to Cambridge. Took his potty.

  Oxbridge Blues

  While up at Magdalen

  Spent the time dagdalen.

  Moved on to Caiu
s

  Became the baius knaius.

  Half-term

  Half-term holiday, family away

  Half-wanting to go, half-wanting to stay

  Stay in bed for half the day.

  Half-read, half-listen to the radio

  Half-think things through. Get up,

  Half-dressed, half-wonder what to do.

  Eat half a loaf, drink half a bottle

  (Save the other half until later).

  Other half rings up. Feel better.

  Away from You

  Away from you

  I feel a great emptiness

  a gnawing loneliness

  With you

  I get that reassuring feeling

  of wanting to escape.

  Good Old William

  ‘I concur with everything you say,’

  smiled William.

  ‘Oh yes, I concur with that,

  I agree.’

  ‘If that’s the general feeling you can count on me.

  Can’t say fairer.’

  Good old

  William, the Concurrer.

  Writer’s Block

  The excitement I felt

  as I started the poem

  Disappeared on reaching

  the end of the fourth line.

  Executioner’s Block

  Money good

  Hours short

  Can’t stand blood

  Don’t like sport

  Had to stop

  Nervous wreck

  Given chop

  Pain in neck.

  Children’s Writer

  John in the garden

  Playing goodies and baddies

  Janet in the bedroom

  Playing mummies and daddies

  Mummy in the kitchen

  Washing and wiping

  Daddy in the study

  Stereotyping.

  For Want of a Better Title

  The Countess

  when the Count passed away

  During a Bach

  cello recital

  Married an Archduke

  the following day

  For want of a better title.

  The State of Poetry

  New Poem

  So far, so good

  Sound Advice

  Once you write a poem

  you must write another

  To prevent the first

  from falling over.

  Riddle

  To ease us

  through those difficult days

  At hand to tease out

  waifs and strays

  Though causing pain

  we squeeze you again

  and again. Vain? Not really

  more a fear of the unruly

  If you wish to borrow mine

  simply repeat the opening line.

  Literary Riddle

  I am

  Out of my tree

  Away with the fairies

  A nut. A fruitcake. What am I?

  Answers: Tweezers.

  One line short of a cinquain.

  Acrostic

  A favourite literary devi

  Ce is the one whe

  Re the first letter

  Of each line spell

  S out the subject the poe

  T wishes to write about.

  I must admit, I

  Can’t see the point myself.

  Granny’s Favourite Anagram

  A granma

  is an anagram

  of anagram.

  Clerihews

  Jane Austen

  Got lost in

  Stoke-on-Trent.

  Moral: She shouldn’t have went.

  Edmund Clerihew Bentley

  Invented the clerihew accidentally.

  And incidentally,

  Why didn’t he call it the bentley?

  Clara Hughes

  Invented clarahughes

  ‘After me they’re named,’

  She claimed.

  Apostrophe

  What fun to be

  an apostrophe

  floating above an s

  Hovering like a paper kite

  in between the its

  Eavesdropping, tiptoeing

  high above the thats

  An inky comet spiralling

  The highest tossed of hats.

  A Critic Reviews the Curate’s Egg

  ‘It’s all bad.

  Especially in parts.’

  @thomasdylan LOL

  ‘What Dylan Thomas means to me in 140 characters –

  bringing him into the modern era in the form of a text’

  Request from the Western Mail

  He fell in love with words as a child

  Language-guzzler, dazzling, wild.

  Crazily obscure, lyrical yet tough

  To describe the magic, one hundred

  And forty characters is not enou

  Epitaphs

  The Wreck of the Hesperus

  A lass

  bound to a mast

  drowned

  alas.

  Lady Godiva

  Here lies Lady Godiva.

  She didn’t wear a bra

  or knickers iva.

  Moll Flanders

  Here lies Moll Flanders.

  It has to be said

  a thief, a whore

  and five times wed.

  Adept was she

  at social climbing

  then repented.

  Nice timing.

  The After-Dinner Speaker

  Sitting around the table each evening

  his wife and children pick nervously

  at their food, dreading the sound

  of the tapping of the knife against the glass,

  of the rapping of the spoon upon the table,

  signalling that he will rise to his feet

  and upstanding, speak for forty minutes.

  An hour sometimes, if the wine kicks in.

  How they look forward to those nights when he’s away,

  at a conference, say, of managers or teachers.

  And they don’t have to listen

  To those boring, yawning after-dinner speeches.

  The Perfect Crime

  The sword-swallower

  stabbed his unfaithful

  wife to death

  Before disposing

  of the murder weapon

  in one gulp.

  Drop Dead Gorgeous

  Inserting a deadly comma into the cliché

  He said, ‘Drop dead, gorgeous,’

  Then pulled the trigger

  Whoops!

  You are strangely excited

  as we enter the crowded bar

  and find a small table in the corner.

  You insist on fetching the drinks

  and before disappearing

  squeeze a note into my hand.

  It reads: ‘Why go home tonight?

  I have a room. I have a bed.

  I have a spare toothbrush.’

  I recognize my own handwriting.

  Deadpan Delivery

  I was popping a few frozen

  Fugo fish fingers under the grill

  When there came a loud knocking

  Quickly donning my clown costume,

  I opened the door.

  It was the Deadpan Man with a delivery

  ‘Do I have to sign for this?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I’m not hard of hearing,’

  He quipped, deadpan.

  Sign Language

  Hannah said that at boarding school

  Talking in the dorm was forbidden after lights out

  So she and her friends devised a form of sign language.

  Trouble was, in the dark, they couldn’t see what they were saying.

  The Juggler

  Cousin Amos, famous in his day

  Would only juggle with objects

  Beginning with ‘A’

  Like Acorns, Apples and Anchovies

  Alarm clocks, Armadillos and
Armchairs

  And just the once, an Alligator

  Which, sad to say

  Went straight for the jugular.

  Fame

  The best thing

  about being famous

  is when you walk

  down the street

  and people turn round

  to look at you

  and bump into things.

  Vanity Press

  Fell in love with my editor

  wrote poems, yearned for her lips

  She married a literary critic

  now sends me rejection slips.

  Q

  I join the queue

  We move up slowly.

  ‘What are we queuing for?’

  I ask the lady in front of me.

  ‘To join another queue,’ she explains.

  ‘How pointless,’ I say, ‘I’m leaving.’

  She points to another long queue

  ‘Then you must get in line.’

  I join the queue

  We move up slowly.

  You Asked For a Poem

  You asked for a poem

  off the top of my head

  I plucked out a hair

  ‘That’s not fair’ you said.