The Poet's eye -- Freedom Hall

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Date Posted: 13:26:52 10/16/04 Sat
Author: Silly Girl
Author Host/IP: 68.91.91.43
Subject: The Poet's eye

The Magdalene Laundries

by Joni Mitchell

I was an unmarried girl

I'd just turned twenty-seven

When they sent me to the sisters

For the way men looked at me

Branded as a jezebel

I knew I was not bound for Heaven

I'd be cast in shame

Into the Magdalene
laundries

Most girls come here pregnant

Some by their own fathers

Bridget got that belly

By her parish priest

We're trying to get things white as snow

All of us woe-begotten-daughters

In the streaming stains

Of the Magdalene laundries

Prostitutes and destitutes

And temptresses like me

Fallen women

Sentenced into dreamless drudgery

Why do they call this heartless place

Our Lady of Charity?

Oh charity!

These bloodless brides of Jesus

If they had just once glimpsed their groom

Then they'd know and they'd drop the stones

Concealed behind their rosaries

They wilt the grass they walk upon

They leech the light out of a room

They'd like to drive us down the drain

At the Magdalene laundries

Peg O'Connell died today

She was a cheeky girl

A flirt

They just stuffed her in a hole!

Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring!

One day I'm going to die here too

And they'll plant me in the dirt

Like some lame bulb

That never blooms come any spring

Not any spring

No, not any spring

Not any spring

Home
Page

There was a guy in Nashville who was suing a reporter for saying that
he had never been in prison. Claimed it slandered him, because he was
famous for his prison songs. I think the Magdalene laundries were still in
business in the seventies, thinking about Molly Bloom. The first time I went to
jail was about fifty years ago, I slugged a cop back in Mobtown. this was
the summer of Brown Vs Topeka board of education. Things was tense in that
southern town, lucky I passed for white, I might have been shot.

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