Skyla McLeod, her parents named her, Hoped to shoot her to the top – Alas, the ev’ryday has claimed her, Clipped her wings and let her drop. She’s just a loser in the sky, Although she knows it’s all a mock – For now she only reaches high By living in a tower block.
Skyla McLeod in her fairy-tower, Watching the tiny people go, Pretending that she has the power To interrupt their to-and-fro. But still, her life is not so grim, When comes her prince, at the end of his shift – Then she’ll let down her hair for him, And he’ll ascend (though in the lift).
Once there was a time when a man was his surname – The only name they ever used at school, or in the Guards. A gentleman at club would be hailed as little better Than the sappers in the trenches or the inmates in the yards. Forenames were for sissies and for ladies – or your relatives, And only then because they else would all be called the same. Soon as breeched and blazered, they were down to the initial – All that mattered was the fam’ly silver and the fam’ly name, But one or two more wily gents had first-names not to be ignored – Jerome K Jerome and Ford Madox Ford…
This poem is dedicated to William Carlos Williams.
Cry out your name to the wind, As it gathers and flies, Let it carry your name on its wing To the edge of the skies. Cry out your name to the wind, And the wind replies – “I am Aneurin, I am Belinda, The unseen and wise. Now I am Cormac, blowing, blowing, Davina rising, Ezra free – Soon to be Fortune, waiting, growing – Filling the sails at mill and sea. I am the storm and the maelstrom twinned, The harbinger-bringer, the hurricane eyes !” So cry out your name to the wind, And your name shall rise.
Don’t ask me her birth-name, For I never heard it Till many years later – too late to take root. No, she was called Clover: So terribly English, So strangely old-fashioned, and strangely un-cute. And pure Anglo-Saxon – her name, but not her – No, she was as Chinese as any I’ve met, With excellent English and excellent manners, Yet bearing the name that was all Somerset.
And as for her birth-name, I knew that she had one, But she never told me, and I never asked. And had I been told it, I’d only be baffled By which was her first name, and which was her last. So she plucked a new one, did Clover, a new name – I don’t know why this name, but this name is she. She chose it at high school, I gather – they all did, Her classmates and Clover, they chose who to be.
She still has her birth-name, She hasn’t erased it, She still has her birth-name for using back home – But here she is Clover For living in London, (Though maybe she’s Cleo when living in Rome). We in the West are too jealous of birth-names, We get what we get, and we lump what we got, Then sneer at the actors and writers for daring – But Clover is Clover because…well, why not ?
There’s something strange about forenames In the Anglophonic world – We’re pretty relaxed about the unusual (Like Sue for a boy and Manson for a girl). I was saying as much To Anglophone Sutch.
“Ah well,” he replied, “we’ve always been So easy going in our names. Indeed, we’re laissez-faire to a fault, And sometimes turn our children into games. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t care – Why, ask my daughter, Laissez-Faire !”
“Could it be a Protestant thing ?” I asked him, but he shook his head. “Denmark, Iceland, Germany, Are just as strict as Spain” he said. “But why not ask a registrar ?” And so I turned to Proddy Parr.
“We’re under orders not to interfere,” She told me, “more or less – So just last week, I registered An ‘Octopus’, a ‘Table’ and a ‘Mess’. Little Britons set to make their mark, Like ‘Superman’ and ‘Sharky-Shark’.”
“That said, we do have, on occasion, Cause to be a prudent voice To overly-creative parents, When their child will have to bear their choice. It only takes a quiet word To stop a ‘Clitoris’ or ‘Turd’.”
“But by and large, we’re mostly made Of Johns and Janes, and that’s okay – We’ve got the choice, though, that’s the point ! It seems to work, so what they hey.” And that is why, my darling child, I named you Unverboten Wilde !
Dammerung Dasching: A girl with one hell of a heck of a name ! It’s hardly her fault, of course, She didn’t choose it – Her thunderbolt handle is barely her blame – In fact, it’s absurd, But her parents once heard Of the power a moniker has on its wearer, And children so labelled Were feted and fabled, Endorsing their promise upon their proud bearer. And so she became An incentive for fame, Did Dammerung Dasching – the girl in the frame. For nobody ordin’ry gets to be called that – She’s in for a lifetime of being enthralled-at It’s hardly her fault, of course, She didn’t choose it, But hers is the force, And she cannot refuse it. The muses are summoned, The devils the same: Now they are the players and she is the game – With a flash and a flame From a passionate dame, She’s Dammerung Dasching – the girl with the name.
Somewhere out there, I’m not solitaire, Cos somebody’s sharing my name. An unaware pair, we are, Not quite so rare, we are – Feels so unfair, but there’s on-one to blame. I must share a claim To some unwitting fame – I ought not to care, But it still seems a shame: With names going spare, It is baffling, I swear, That two of us bear one the same !
I always wanted to change my name – But of course I never did. I’d invent noms de plumes as a game, as a kid, But be far too embarrassed to tell. Instead I languished on in the hell Of my parents’ choice – my nominal shame. And I never gave voice to my secret name – The pseudonym that I never became.
But hey, we cannot help the way we’re christened, And parents cannot ever hope to guess – And so we get their hand-me-downs And grow to like them, more – or less. And maybe also we’re conditioned By these names with which we’re branded: Bright Miss Pinks and drab Miss Browns – We’re bound by handles that we’re handed !
I always wanted to change my name, But of course I never will. Though who needs shelter more from unsought fame Than the bashful-still ? So my lovingly-crafted pseudonym Is firmly kept inside, And it’s too late now to allude to him – I could never be him if I tried.
