Down and Out

Blog 17

A couple of years ago, I read Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner again, all seven parts. While it is a tour de force, it is very much of its time. You are unlikely to meet an old sailor with an albatross around his neck any time soon, let alone on your way to a wedding.

It set me to wondering what a modern equivalent might be. As you walk along the street in many town centres, you will encounter down-and-out people sitting in doorways on sheets of cardboard, with their worldly possessions in bags strewn around them, or in shopping trolleys. Sometimes they ask for change, sometimes they simply sit there with a hat for donations in front of them.

It seemed to me that I could tell the story of one of these characters, and so my poem Guilt came into being. It is, you will be glad to know, much shorter than Coleridge’s Rime!

Guilt

The old man lay on a cardboard sheet

He wore ancient boots on his bony feet.

He’d a tattered cloak and an old serge suit

He would ask for alms on my homeward route.

And I heard him cry as I passed him by:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”

So I stopped and asked him,” Tell me, please

Why you lie here out in the street and freeze?”

And he looked at me in the evening gloom

With an eye that glittered with guilt and rheum.

And his first reply was his usual cry:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”

But his tale was sad and his crimes were great

And the light was low and the hour was late.

So we both sat down on a nearby bench

Where I sat well back from his rising stench.

And I met his eye as he made his cry:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”

He’d a wife and child and a well-paid job,

But he drank too much with the local mob.

Then he took cocaine and he got the sack

And his wife left home and did not come back.

But he gave a sigh as he made his cry:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”

For he took to crime to provide his need,

Used his fists too hard, made his victims bleed.

So he went to gaol and spent years inside

But reformed in there, made his guilt his guide.

With his head held high he repeats his cry:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”

So I wondered why he remained out here

In the lonely street all the livelong year.

And he said, “It’s my penance for what I did.

I can live all right on the odd dropped quid.”

And I now knew why he would always cry:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”

So I left him there under twinkling stars,

With the sounds of laughter from nearby bars.

And I walked on home with a heavy heart,

I was sad that his life had been torn apart.

I could not deny he was right to cry:

“Oh, the nights are cold and the days are long

And I can’t put right what I once did wrong.”