Mary

Sat looking out of her window she shouts

At the boy sitting at the bus stop alone

He looks up and around but the voice can’t be found

So she goes back in, and picks up the phone

Dials 999, tells them everything’s fine

There’s no way today she’ll be needing their help

She ignores the TV, which just makes her angry

And picks up a book, written by herself

She laughs and she moans at the people she wrote

And curses herself, for being alone

She’s 110, and she hates it when

People ask about the thing that she must have seen

Like it must have been fun to be rationed and bombed

And all of her friends died before 1990

She can just about walk, but she knows how to talk

It depends on the question, the answer she’ll give

If she’s asked something right, she can talk all night

Otherwise she’ll just say live and let live

Oh Mary, Mary, won’t you tell, how much do you know

Oh Mary, how much are you willing to show?

Mary, Mary, what’s the reason, you’re still sitting here now

A life of contradiction, immortalised in fiction,

You must have lived it somehow

She’s written 53 books, all published works

Tales of lives that she’s seen all about

No one could say where, because it just appears

She always stays in, never goes out

But every character is real, is possible to feel

Every man and woman, dog cat and horse

Intimately researched, in Library and church

Births deaths and marriages, registered of course

Someone once asked her an ill advised question

‘Mary, if you’re earning a sound amount

Then why are you here in this flat year after year

Has it never occurred that you could move out?’

‘Well if I wanted, and by the way, it’s none of your business

I could go to Barbados or Spain or La

And become like my characters, suing for damages

Against some government – no, here I will stay’

Oh Mary, Mary, won’t you tell, how much do you know

Oh Mary, how much are you willing to show?

Mary, Mary, what’s the reason, you’re still sitting here now

A life of contradiction, immortalised in fiction,

You must have lived it somehow

I’m sure one day she’ll fall down, and hit the ground,

And never rise up, to walk again

And then all her possessions, her life long collection

Shall be auctioned and sold to the highest bidding hand

And then her private life becomes our property

And we’ll find out what made 53 works

Or maybe she’ll take it all down with her

Then all her life becomes buried in dirt.