Rosemarie Rowley (1942-)
There is Nothing Like a Dame—
and there is no dame like a building society or a bank!
1There may be nothing like me, but I assure you
2the world would have gone to hell but for organised sex—
3if boys and girls were left to nature's provenance,
4a person like me would be nowhere at all.
5Oh, I know how to milk attraction
6and stabilise what is essentially of short duration:
7if boys and girls were left to innocence
8there'd be no delighting old men.
9If that sounds unfair, I didn't make the rules—
10all this spontaneity leaves everyone very poor,
11the Church, the magistrates and the building societies
12are all depending on the regulation of love.
13It's the people who won't smile who bother me,
14hard fitted, easy suited, do they think it's all for free?
Notes
1] "The title occurs in the musical South Pacific by Rogers and Hammerstein" (poet's note).
14] hard fitted: "Patrick Kavanagh's mother's words for the faint of heart" (poet's note).
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Copyright © Rosemarie Rowley 2007. Not to be republished without permission of the poet.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Rosemarie Rowley, In Memory of Her
(Dublin: Rowan Tree Press, 2004): 37.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2007
Recent editing: 1:2007/3/20
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abcdeeffghijkk
Other poems by Rosemarie Rowley
