The Dover Bitch

A Criticism of Life

Original Text

Hecht, Anthony. The Hard Hours. London: Oxford University Press, 1967: 17.

1So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl

2With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,

3And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,

4And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad

5All over, etc., etc.'

6Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read

7Sophocles in a fairly good translation

8And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,

9But all the time he was talking she had in mind

10The notion of what his whiskers would feel like

11On the back of her neck. She told me later on

12That after a while she got to looking out

13At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,

14Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds

15And blandishments in French and the perfumes.

16And then she got really angry. To have been brought

17All the way down from London, and then be addressed

18As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort

19Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.

20Anyway, she watched him pace the room

21And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,

22And then she said one or two unprintable things.

23But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,

24She's really all right. I still see her once in a while

25And she always treats me right. We have a drink

26And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year

27Before I see her again, but there she is,

28Running to fat, but dependable as they come.

29And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh

RPO Edition

2009

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