Saturday Market

Bury your heart in some deep green hollow

Or hide it up in a kind old tree

Better still, give it the swallow

When she goes over the sea.

In Saturday Market there's eggs a'plenty

And dead-alive ducks with their legs tied down -

Grey old gaffers and boys of twenty -

Girls and the women of the town -

Pitchers and sugar-sticks, ribbons and laces

Posies and whips and dicky-birds' seed,

Silver pieces and smiling faces,

In Saturday Market they've all they need.

What were you showing in Saturday Market

That set it grinning from end to end

Girls and gaffers and boys of twenty - ?

Cover it close with your shawl, my friend -

Hasten you home with the laugh behind you,

Over the down - out of sight,

Fasten your door, though no one will find you,

No one will look on a Market night.

See you, the shawl is wet, take out from under

The red, dead thing. In the white of the moon

On the flags does it stir again? Well and no wonder -

Best make an end of it, bury it soon.

If there is blood on the hearth, who'll know it?

Or blood on the stairs,

When a murder is over and done why show it?

In Saturday Market nobody cares.

Then lie you straight on your bed for a short short weeping,

And still a long,long rest,

There's a one in the town so sure of sleeping

As you, in the house on the down, with a hole in your breast.

Think no more of the swallow,

Forget you, the sea,

Never again remember the deep green hollow,

Or the top of the kind old tree!

- Charlotte Mew