Skip to content

Time took your love - now time will take its time.

'Move on', you hear, but to what howling emptiness?

The kinder place is closest to your dead

where you lounge in confident no-motion, no thought

of budging. Constant in analytic sorrow, you abide.

It even makes you happy when you're feeling blue.

Jump up, jump back. Flail on the spot.

I can disprove this 'moving on' nostrum.

Do the loco-motion in my living room.

This poem contains brief excerpts from the lyrics to 'The Loco-Motion', words and music by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, originally performed by Eva Boyd as Little Eva.

Little Eva

Denise Riley

More from
Poem of the Week

Mira Rosenthal

Features

translated from the Polish written by
Tomasz Różycki
Russell Thornton

Letters