.

The Evening The Times Newspaper
Turned Into Jane Eyre

My life had become like a broadsheet,
__The Telegraph, maybe The Times:
The financial section—prose sober and neat;
__Inflation—the yen falls and climbs.
While reading this daily, and ever more jaded,
__By boring discussions of wages,
My newspaper tore, the ink quickly faded:
__You ripped your way up through the pages.

The suits on the concourse at Waterloo Station
__All noticed my joy and my fright.
My Times underwent a divine transformation
__Like someone regaining his sight.
You stood by the clock where they waited for trains,
__Familiar, reserved, but with flair.
My journal of record? It went up in flames:
__In a flash, I was reading Jane Eyre.

My feelings, so dulled by SSRIs
__And age with the wealth of a hovel,
Without any warning felt very alive;
__I was suddenly part of a novel.
My wife was now Bertha, enraged in the attic,
__Your boyfriend was St. John, I guess.
Attraction was instant, inspiring, emphatic:
__This burgundy-nailed governess.

The prose promptly altered: transcendent, noetic,
__No longer the stark black and white;
Facts, figures, but beauty so very poetic:
__A sunset one Thornfield Hall night.
I’m not quite as brooding as him, that I’m sure,
__And you’re not as serious or neat.
The Times had become such a hideous bore,
__All it took was for us two to meet.

Within half an hour we both felt so certain
__But English restraint and control
Meant it took time to say we were clearly one person,
__Each making the other one whole.
I’ve accepted my life’s not The Times but Jane Eyre
__And in Brontë my future I’ll find.
Let’s hope if this moves beyond an affair
__I don’t get myself burnt and go blind.

.

.

Lucius Falkland is the nom de plum of a writer and academic from London. His poetry has appeared in The New English Review and Snakeskin, among other journals.

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8 Responses

  1. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Lucius, I simply adore this poem. I love the message and I like the lines: “My newspaper tore, the ink quickly faded:/ You ripped your way up through the pages.” Being a huge fan of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, I’m also drawn to your mention of “Bertha, enraged in the attic” … what a wife… what a woman! Your poem could well be my love story… ending, “and reader, I married him.” – I did… I closed the pages of The Times, steeped myself in nineteenth century classics, and found the love of my life. The closing line is a hoot! Great stuff!

    Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Lucius, this poem has my resounding attention and approval as a first class poem of substance. The vilification of “The Times’ is only one of a big set of newspapers that need to be pillorized; however, I understand it is one of the representative misguided rags. Very well done with great lines and rhymes.

    Reply
  3. Norma Pain

    A wonderfully clever and enjoyable poem Lucius. I also very much appreciated the humor of the last line. Thank you.

    Reply
  5. Paul A. Freeman

    Weird and wonderful, Lucius.

    A unique piece of verse that brought back memories (collecting grandma from under the clock at Waterloo when she visited).

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
  6. Jeff Eardley

    Lucius, a great piece that bounces along to its fiery conclusion. I must admit to being a Times, and occasional Telegraph reader (only for the crossword!!!) but a great old masterwork beats both. Jude the Obscure has recently done the trick for me. I really enjoyed this. Thank you.

    Reply
  7. Drilon Bajrami

    I found myself laughing aloud at many points of the poem! I only ever read newspapers when I took public transport without a mobile phone (the bad old days) and still this day on the London Underground. A few months ago, this occurred and I only read about 4-5 articles from front to back. Absolute drivel and dross!

    It’s a shame I can’t read comfortably on public transport, though, and audiobooks for classics are just a no-go. I tried that with ‘Crime and Punishment’ and I think audiobooks work only for simple reads.

    I’ll have to share this with my father, who as a former avid classics reader, may find this poem disconcerting, or so I hope!

    Superb poem!

    Reply
  8. C.B. Anderson

    No kidding here. You know what you are about, and I am there too. Nice work!

    Reply

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