The Ring-Pull Chain

‘It’s all I can do to remember

Your face, your look or your smile,

You left one day, but you didn’t say

You’d be gone for many a mile;

For many a mile and fortune

That you took in your pocket then,

You left me chained to the window-pane

To welcome you back again.’

 

‘I stared for many a morning,

I cried for many a night,

But kept my pain on a ring-pull chain

I counted by candle-light.

A link for each day you wandered,

A yard for each month you strayed,

Three hundred feet back in Stanley Street

Is waiting to be unmade.’

 

‘You took my love at the parting

But me, you left behind,

My love was never returned, so lost

I followed, travelling blind.

My tears I wove in the ring-pull chain

To save for the day we met,

But steel corrodes, and the old crossroads

Have never been rained on yet.’

 

‘The days of ‘sorry’ are over,

The long regret’s begun,

I came to see if the memory

Would dare to call me ‘son’.

If I ever have a child in trust

While life is lost in pain,

I may well go, but my love will show,

And there’ll be no ring-pull chain.’

 

David Lewis Paget