Poem

Glyn Maxwell

Side by side

The Lion\'s Face

MR D

the doctor was my doctor
the doctor was
there was the different doctor
the different doctor there
the different
he had the best results
he had the best results
he had the best
they never come the same
people never come here
people come here
two ladies held the picture
of the boy beside the seaside
to be beside
to be beside I
buy him the ice-cream!
buy him the ice-cream
beside the side I
said I have the things
I have the things
there’s money in the land
to buy the things but no
beside they say no
they fold the boy away
in the white ice-cream book
in the white book
the different doctor closing
time in the white book
the doctor is my doctor
where is my white doctor
who comes who came before
no one ever
comes who came before

This is an excerpt from the opera The Lion\'s Face, with music by Elena Langer, and words by Glyn Maxwell.

Glyn Maxwell

(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1962)

Glyn Maxwell’s poetry is noted for its everyday vocabulary, used in tight metrical forms. His work is often concerned with the individual’s relationship to the community, expressed through narrators who are either outsiders or isolated within a group. In ‘The Play of the Word’, the narrator remembers the story of an unnamed ‘her’ — an outsider who stays in town for a short while, before she is ...