Monday, 3 June 2019

Move Over, Darling


 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.