Much too belately, I realized I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago. I was the first to admit my surprise that Doris Day had still been alive but I do obituaries here when necessary, it's just that the qualifications required are entirely my decision and decided by how moved by the death I am. You have to be quite good to get in.
I gazed, on and off, at a picture of Alex Higgins from the newspaper all evening, I grieved over Gregory Isaacs and, no matter what I said, I knew I couldn't do justice to Basil D'Oliveira. With Seamus Heaney and David Bowie, I thought it fit to mark their passing but said that others would find better things to say than me. If I can contribute something personal, that's what I'll add.
But Move Over, Darling was my first favourite pop record. That might be fair to say, pre-Beatles, pre-Monkees, pre Silence is Golden, and a long way pre-T. Rex. I had no idea who Doris Day was or that she'd become quite so iconic. It doesn't even seem to be regarded as her greatest hit but what do they know who can't summon sufficient langour and prefer The Deadwood Stage.
Move Over, Darling first appeared, just about, in About Larkin before being included in The Perfect Book. It is under the protocols of acknowledging such credits that I allow myself permission to put my own poem here,
Move Over, Darling
The
Light Programme was safe and sound,
the
wireless set warmed-up behind
those
dark outposts of Europe strewn
across
its dial from Hilversum
to
Reykjavik. What went on there
was
hard to say. But one lady
especially
used to promise
me
everything although I knew
nothing
about her, not even
her
name. She might have been a nurse,
or
sounded like a nurse might sound,
although
I wasn’t ill for all
I
knew and was too innocent
for
fetishes. I moved over,
like
she said, only too pleased to,
because
I knew she must be right.
I
know that if I wait for her
she’ll
come and sing to me again
in
private and only I’ll know
it’s
me she means but we can’t kiss
while
beyond us the neighbourhood
stretches
into its map of roads
under
a shameless summer sky
where
there are stars we cannot see.
