A free and funny girl
In a foreign world.
By day she saw the sights,
And then the neon, shouting nights.
Absorbing every ray;
A gilded summer where she lay.

Too soon the winter came
And every day became the same,
So whilst she longed for friends of home,
She did as they did in Rome:
The clubs, the cafes and the bars
And soon strangers’ sordid cars.

When she stopped to look and think,
As her face grew full and pink,
All the good things she had tasted:
The days beloved she’d wasted.
Sick of drink and lost of will
That inevitable pill.

In shabby flats she bought and dealt,
Rugless boards on which she knelt.
Those unconscious sofa-beds
Home to myriad dead-heads,
Wasters, flotsam and the weak,
And the thoughts too tired to speak.

All her ruined pretty dresses
And her tangled mousey tresses
Spoke of youthful dreams unlived
And a native beauty hid.
In the alley that she died,
No-one came and no-one cried.