The Ballad of Dave and Mae

And now Eden
Is a worn town east of the hills.
It wears a halo on its gasometers.
Chimneys cough their vapours on the wind.
Clouds drop from ceiling to floor,
Speck paradise with dreams of grime,
Blemish the washerwoman and her innocent laundry.

Dave is not at home.
Out of work,
Cruising on his Yamaha,
His lack of grace is hidden under leather robes.
Dun and dusty he rides the highway
Unaware in his imagined weightlessness
That he is falling from nowhere to nowhere.
On a roundabout he tastes the pangs of choice:
On each road sign is foreknowledge.
These bare trees with letters for leaves
Proffer exit or release
And he goes to his fate.

Mae,
In another restaurant,
Is eating out her heart in menus.
Caught by self-denial in a watching cage
Her body taunts her
And she knows it by its eagerness to grow.
To escape temptation
She totters on her flimsy heels to the outside sun.
Precarious, vulnerable,
She holds her rage around her like a skirt,
Afraid that offers of pleasure and plenty
Thwart her spirit,
Bringing guilt and remorse
And unrequited hunger.

© BH, 1983

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Coming on forty years for this. Written for an exhibition in the basement of an Aberdeen hotel. Illustrated by a wrinkly watercolour and various hand-drawn of typewritten texts.

It was my 33-year-old soul trying to understand sexual politics and set it against the peculiarly black-and-white paradoxes of the Biblical fall from grace. Of course 'Dave and Mae' is an anagram of 'Adam and Eve'…

Six years later The Ballad of Dave and Mae - Part Two emerged.

The main illustration is the final exhibit. Below are other preliminary sketches…