And the other is a cheerful poem despite its title,
which is called "The Death Of Aunt Alice."
It's really about one of those ladies who announced disasters
in every possible occasion.
I must say in the Wales and in the West of England
I think, perhaps in the West too here,
there are plenty of people who have a need
to talk about disasters.
My aunt was one.
"Aunt Alice's funeral was orderly,
each mourner correct, dressed in decent black, not one
balding relative berserk with an axe.
Poor Alice, where's your opera ending?
But alive you relished high catastrophe.
Your Bible, page one of a newspaper.
You talked of typhoid when we sat to eat, Fords on the M4
mangled upside down just when we were going for a spin.
And at London airport as you waved us off,
how you fatigued us with metal fatigue,
vague shapes of Boeings bubbling under seas.
Such disguises and such transformations.
Even trees were about factories for coffins.
Rose bushes decoys to rip boys' eyes with thorns.
Sparrows becames vampires.
Spiders had designs.
And your friends also grew spectacular,
none to bore you by dying naturally.
A. had both kidneys removed in error at Guy's.
'And such a clever surgeon, too.'
B., one night fell screaming down a lift shaft.
Poor fellow.
He never had a head for heights.
C, so witty, so feminine, pity she ended up
in a concrete mixer.
But now never again, Alice, will you utter glory
admonitions as some do oaths.
Disasters that lit your eyes will no more
unless, trembling up there, pale saints
listen to details of their bloody martyrdom,
all their tall stories your eternity.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]