The Dialogic.
The Licorice
Fields at Pontefract
by Sir John Betjeman
In the licorice fields at Pontefract
My love and I did meet
And many a burdened licorice bush
Was blooming round our feet;
Red hair she had and golden skin,
Her sulky lips were shaped for sin,
Her sturdy legs were flannel-slack'd
The strongest legs in Pontefract.
The light and dangling licorice flowers
Gave off the sweetest smells;
From various black Victorian towers
The Sunday evening bells
Came pealing over dales and hills
And tanneries and silent mills
And lowly streets where country stops
And little shuttered corner shops.
She cast her blazing eyes on me
And plucked a licorice leaf;
I was her captive slave and she
My red-haired robber chief.
Oh love! for love I could not speak,
It left me winded, wilting, weak,
And held in brown arms strong and bare
And wound with flaming ropes of hair.
The Licorice Yields in
Pontefract
My response to Sir John Betjeman
Two friends of mine worked
for HARIBO
and one day decided they were
in love.
Oh sure it must be, said
I, and many a burdened
licorice bush was blooming
around your feet.
I say, I too met a red head
and she had golden skin,
with her sulky lips, shaped
for all of sin!
You should have seen the
sturdy legs- flannel-slack’d-
they must’ve been the
strongest in all of Pontefract!
Forgive me. I am bitter,
all be it
the “sweetest of smells” infiltrating my nostrils.
There are still fields, but
the plant’s
no longer grown here. The
soft soil gives way
to confectioneries in slave factories, and the evening bells
now come from the landlord
wanting to give boot to hell:
“B***** off, tha’s ‘ead’s
in a spin!”
Ironic I’d say, as he helps
himself to another gin.
That night, some bint cast
her flicking eyes on me
and I offered her a strawb;
at times even I am Haribo’s
captive slave
and she is my blonde haired displacement
for the real world. Pomfretis now Ponte Carlo
so maybe I’ll bleach my
roots and buy me a Henley’s top;
and you’ll find me on the
corner drinking alcopops.