The night Elvis died,

flat on my back

looking at this chap

(beautiful and cold)

light his French fag,

(the one he didn’t want)

take a superfluous drag,

I didn’t know then

while the radio played

This Time, This Time,

Elvis was cooler than he’d ever been.

 

When I’d got up-

thinking, Boy that was clean,

sweat-free and guiltless

like baby-love, frighteningly simple,

as a novel when you’ve finished it,

nothing in it, nothing to it-

I walked home through the rain

while the world wept

‘Sing it again, El.’

 

27th April 1978