The Last King of May

Two poems

Abbreviated lyrics from Natalie Merchant’s (if you'd like to see all the lyrics or hear the song, go here)
The Last King of May

Farewell today
Travel on now
Be on your way
Go safely there
And never worry, never care
Beyond this day

Farewell tonight
To our joy and our delight
Go and go peacefully
We can’t keep your majesty
Be on your way

Make way for the last king of May
Make a cardboard crown for him
And make your voices one
Praise the crazy mother’s son who loved his life

Make way for the last king of May
And make a hole in the sky for him
Raise your voices up
And lift your loving cup
To his long life


Jeff Epton's
The Last King of May

Is the king I remember
the first? Or echo? Or a
painter’s blend of splash
and memory? All my kings

caress me like baby fingers
on my breast. All my kings
whisper like hillside breezes
stunned to find the gowned queen

waiting. All my kings
dream virgin blush onto
their veteran queen. All my kings
get a lover coy as ecstasy requires.

Why should the beloved weep
so hard that the first prince did
not endure? Who imagines
the shattered eternal composes

herself for the young royal
who knows no king before him?
Ah, love, you have risen with the sun,
lighting me awake and ready. Come.

Shall we talk and sip tea,
soothe the heaved and troubled lives
of the wild, ranging pack? Putting off
our sweet roll until lust sheds restraint?

Riding hurricanes like storm gods,
wishing for the mother of winds
to blow us to the consummation
from which I alone return.

Grant me uncorrupted memory
of the first king. Barring that,
speed the visit of the last king
in whose arms I will finally rest.