Edith Sitwell

is fastening the gold collar made,

she says, by one of my greatest friends,

though I only met her once.

It has three pendulum blades, the largest

reaching from breast to breast.

She is taking a risk because it clanks

when reciting her poems. Tonight

she will take to The Churchill Club

a new poem, Heart and Mind.

It twitches among her manuscripts.

She holds her poem in jewelled fingers,

beams of light flash like searchlights finding

razor sharp partings in the hair of young soldiers.

She explains: I’ve got such a dreadful cold

and launches into Still Falls the Rain,

ignoring the sirens heralding an air raid.

Edith has always said of life: it’s better

with all the banners flying – isn’t it?

Although she loves jewellery, metal was dangerous

during childhood. Parents instructed

that her uselessly aristocratic nose be trussed,

prongs clamped to her face to straighten

it, her curved spine treated by iron corsets

and braces. Her favourite role is Lady Macbeth.

A doodlebug comes roaring overhead

and Edith gets louder and louder, refusing

to be silenced by an insistent missile.

On the day she dies she will breakfast

on a double martini, with the salutation: I’m dying,

but apart from that I’m alright.

Thyrza Leyshon

War Girls

There’s the girl who clips your ticket for the train,

And the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor,

There’s the girl who does a milk-round in the rain,

And the girl who calls for orders at your door.

Strong, sensible, and fit,

They’re out to show their grit,

And tackle jobs with energy and knack.

No longer caged and penned up,

They’re going to keep their end up

Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

There’s the motor girl who drives a heavy van,

There’s the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat,

There’s the girl who cries ‘All fares, please!’ like a man,

And the girl who whistles taxis up the street.

Beneath each uniform

Beats a heart that’s soft and warm,

Though of canny mother-wit they show no lack;

But a solemn statement this is,

They’ve no time for love and kisses

Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

Jessie Pope

Wood Song

Daughters, when they come

we will hide in the forest,

we’ll cross the meadow

and the orchard,

their sifting rooms,

till we are deer in the woods –

the quick-footed hind

and her fawns –

and we’ll slip through the thickets

or take the water’s scentless course,

and follow the lichen

brightening north,

and I’ll keep you warm

where we nest

beneath the bracken’s

tangled roof,

and in the morning when we wake

we will move, move, move,

beneath the dark forgiving hand

of the clouds,

with the slightest weather

moving on,

and when our feet fall

they will fall like rain,

and there will be no catching us,

and no harm will come,

so keep close daughters

in the woods were we run,

for we are tracks in the dew