Poem: Saturday in Athens
Saturday in Athens
You can just discern her, a faded imprint
in the matinal shimmer
a little shabbier than one might hope
She sits and thinks and sits and thinks
about her glorious heyday years
(which all the world is still applauding)
and wonders what will become of her…
But then as dusk unfolds
She starts to sparkle and preen and glow
and all the lights way down below
salute their boss
in her moonlit gloss.
As midnight comes
she starts to preen
and feel the joy of what she’s been.
From her columns centuries spill
shining shining on her ancient hill.
“Hey all yous,” she suddenly cries,
“all you lot beneath the skies,
Who on earth do you think you are?
Round Athens way there’s just one star.
Everybody suck on this
I am the fucking Acropolis.”
13th September 2014 – Athens
Arthur Smith Sings Leonard Cohen (Vol 2)
September
Saturday 27th – Wyvern Theatre, Swindon – Tickets & Info
November
Fri 3rd – Churchill Theatre, Bromley – Tickets & Info
Mon 6th – Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate –Tickets & Info
Wed 15th – Theatre Royal, Brighton – Tickets & Info
Thursday 23rd – Galway Comedy Festival – Tickets & Info
Wed 29th – Concert Hall, Reading – Tickets & Info
Comments on "Poem: Saturday in Athens"
Saw you in Brighton on Wednesday. We enjoyed the show immensely – well, more than the invisible people behind us. I started off thinking that you were being a bit hard on the woman sitting next to me and started to form a bad impression of you as a person, but that turned out well in the end. Then you humiliated my uncle by making him run around the stage in the nude; at least I think it was my uncle, although I haven’t seen him for forty years but that is what he looked like then. He’s no longer alive.
Between the ages of 14 and 28 I listened to a lot of Leonard (Cohen) then for some reason I stopped. You made me remember how much I liked him so I might start again, now that I am no longer a depressed teenager nor yet a depressed old man.
I told my nephew who lives in Jersey about your show and he wants to see it. I can guarantee you at least five audience members if you decide to go there. I asked him if they got many visiting comedians and he said only Reginald D Hunter and Jimmy Carr. Presumably Jimmy goes there to get some money out the bank.
Tonight we are going to see Bridget Christie. I’m guessing she won’t be going on about members of her family like you did. I know your mother Hazel sounds a real card and all that but Stewart Lee is a better name-drop.
It was a foul and wet autumn night and I got soaked riding my bike into town, but it was worth it for the music and the humour.
Thanks
PS I’m sorry I haven’t mentioned the above poem (which I like a lot), but I haven’t used any exclamation marks! Oh fuck” (that’s two) – but you got a least one semi-colon.