The fair is over, let the people troop, The drunkards stagger homewards down the gutters, The showmen heave in an excited group, The poles tilt slowly down, the canvas flutters, The mauls knock out the pins, the last flare sputters. ’Lower away.’ ’Go easy.’ ’Lower, lower.’ ’You’ve dang near knock my skull in. Loose it slower.’
’Back in the horses.’ ’Are the swing-boats loaded?’ ’All right to start.’ ’Bill, where’s the cushion gone? The red one for the Queen?’ ’I think I stowed it.’ ’You think, you think. Lord, where’s that cushion, John?’ ’It’s in that bloody box you’re sitting on, What more d’you want?’ A concertina plays Far off as wandering lovers go their ways.
Up the dim Bye Street to the market-place The dead bones of the fair are borne in carts, Horses and swing-boats at a funeral pace After triumphant hours quickening hearts; A policeman eyes each waggon as it starts, The drowsy showmen stumble half asleep, One of them catcalls, having drunken deep.
So out, over the pass, into the plain, And the dawn finds them filling empty cans In some sweet-smelling dusty country lane, Where a brook chatters over rusty pans. The iron chimneys of the caravans Smoke as they go. And now the fair has gone To find a new pitch somewhere further on.
But as the fair moved out two lovers came, Ernie and Bessie loitering out together; Bessie with wild eyes, hungry as a flame, Ern like a stallion tugging at a tether. It was calm moonlight, and October weather, So still, so lovely, as they topped the ridge. They brushed by Jimmy standing on the bridge.
And, as they passed, they gravely eyed each other, And the blood burned in each heart beating there; And out into the Bye Street tottered mother, Without her shawl, in the October air. ’Jimmy,’ she cried, ’Jimmy.’ And Bessie’s hair Drooped on the instant over Ernie’s face, And the two lovers clung in an embrace.
’O, Ern.’ ’My own, my Bessie.’ As they kissed Jimmy was envious of the thing unknown. So this was Love, the something he had missed, Woman and man athirst, aflame, alone. Envy went knocking at his marrow-bone, And Anna’s face swam up so dim, so fair, Shining and sweet, with poppies in her hair.
After the fair, the gang began again. Tipping the trollies down the banks of earth. The truck of stone clanks on the endless chain, A clever pony guides it to its berth. ’Let go.’ It tips, the navvies shout for mirth To see the pony step aside, so wise, But Jimmy sighed, thinking of Anna’s eyes.