Penn hill

 Upon Penn hill

Where the pheasant trill

Their startled bagpipe tones

I am alone on cobble stone

Where the bridlepath lays still

Where is the bride? Whose marriage is

It I am running to?

And where is the altar of marathon

Who will be my bride?

Upon Penn hill 

Where the scruffy magic mushroom pickers glean

And hurry and harry the tuffts

That carry their magic bean

And the farmer who sits in his rover and scowls

And the mast's falling over

Because of the owls

The red planets are rolling down pen hill

And a mars bar a day will likely make you ill

The red planets are tumbling

Like bulls down the meadow

Rolling over dozing sheep

There is a war of bells

These red globes collide with churches

Knocking over towers, and school halls

And crushing cars parked in roads

Others swerve out their way

Out their way run the flock, the parishioners, the beadle and the cock

Who crows out his warning in tides of socks

That come falling from the farmer's wife's chest

The mushroom pickers themselves probably think they live on Mars

Wandering around the base of the Microwave tower

Sending them their digital waves, or beaming out to stars

Their mushroom addled brain saves all this as useable power

First they see the footage of the first man on the moon

Then Neil Armstrong is next to them feeding them from a spoon

Saying get better young man America will need you soon

When in reality they are in a Mendip field on a Saturday afternoon

Then suddenly a pheasant beater is perched upon a wall

Calling to his pheasant shooters with his favourite border collie

And as you jog the trees they toggle, in a sense they freeze

And rocks and salt all fill your throat with words you cannot say

And daleks from Mars remind you of those heady summer days

When all this dust, was just like lust, that fades into moon haze

And I can hardly hold it, the weight of boulders up the valley

The weight of feathers waiting to be exploded

By the shot-guns held in shoulders, or cradled in the arms

Of rich and upper class tories who love to tell their stories

Of how they shot down Mars with one moon shot

And wiped out the disease of the red spot

When really the virus like the pheasants came from

Jupiter instead

And Io was with Europa looking on shaking her head