Today our poet Derek Adams celebrates the life, and laments the death, of Ian Dury (1942-2000), singer, songwriter and punk rocker. Dury wrote, with Rod Melvin, the song ‘What a waste’ which was released as a single by Ian Dury and the Blockheads in 1978. It’s Day 630 of the daily poems, still with the Music theme.
What a waste
(for Ian Dury)
There’s a feeling, like the memory of a Kursaal ride,
an old wind, a cold wind that stirs inside.
Rolling in like the wind off the estuary tide,
down a dead flat, mud flat, eight miles wide.
And
somewhere, somefing, somehow sighed,
what a waste – what a waste,
Ian Dury died.
Snazzy little geezer wiv a spazzy stick.
A concrete mixer voice, rough and fick.
Takes the stage, like a fief on the nick.
Hard bard, art tart, don’t giva shit.
And
somefing, somehow, somewhere sighed,
what a waste – what a waste,
Ian Dury died.
Words of an angel, dressed wiv a mallet,
mixed wiv spit from a painter’s palette.
Raw sound, foot down, pushed to the limit,
escaped from the cage of an old cock linnet.
And
somehow, somewhere, somefing sighed,
what a waste – what a waste,
Ian Dury died.
Derek Adams
First published in Read The Music, 2003