There is an affectionate and almost poignant poem in today's Independent (Oct. 29). Written by Martin Newell, it is featured in the regular Friday music pages.

Entitled "Upon Morrissey's Return To England", it is a worth seeing item for chroniclers of Moz-lore:

UPON MORRISSEY'S RETURN TO ENGLAND
By Martin Newell
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Stir your sleeping suicidal stumps boys.
The Elvis of the bedsit heart is back
And coughing on the landing of his forties
Is perfectly entitled to his plaque

A bicycle left leaning in the ginnel
A jacket hanging limply on a chair
The cemetry gates locked up for ages
And Stephen Patrick Morrissey not there.

He had a bit of trouble with the in-laws
Someone got upset and took a train,
A ruction with the pop-press over image
And up he goes before the beak again.

Keats and Yeats support here notwithstanding
A Union Jack as evidence as well.
On the po-faced critics come like coppers
Handcuffs at the Cadogan Hotel
Harsher yet, the words a judge would utter:
"Truculent" and "devious" for two
Knives out for the Oscar Wilde of Stratford?
Come now ladies, this will never do.

Somewhere in the north , a decade earlier
A man who sang his songs in black and white
Floated from a thousand upstairs windows
While Rickenbackers twinkled in the night
Hearing-aids and spectacles went high street
Students copied everything he wrote
The Cupa-Soups congealed on their dressers
As love lay bleeding in an Oxfam coat.

A brace of brilliant albums in the archives
A wealth of wit you wouldn't find today
This is what we do in brave new Britain
Kick the awkward talent out the way.

Put the kettle on the Belling, our kid
Get the Keats out, video The Knack
Pay the taxi, help him with his suitcase
Better let the lodgers know he's back.


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* The reference to Stratford is Newell's chosen word. Whether this was meant to be Stretford, we'll never know.