Memories of Lisbon (Lembranças de Lisboa)

 
Portugal's proud capital, brave city on the mighty Tagus,
Delightful home of delicious Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato,
Ancient town where little tramcars rattle noisily to the stars
And also where I enjoyed the most staggering encounter
Of my entire life with a rampant naughty nympho of uncertain vintage
(but without doubt well old enough to be my grandmother).

How clearly I recall strolling up a hilly street in the Alfama
One balmy summer evening when the sweat was running down
My inter-natal cleft like an odorous river of lust, dripping
Round the back of my undies' gusset onto my testicles,
Thereby causing me to feel hornier than a demented goat
With itching powder sprinkled on his hirsute nether regions.

Attracted by the sensuous sound of female caterwauling
I wandered into a little Fado bar and took a table next to the banheiros
(just in case I was taken short after tasting the dubious delicacies
served by Enrico the seriously retarded fat sweaty waiter,
after having pointed at the cheapest thing on o menu do dia
which probably involved something from the entranhas de um cavalo).

I gazed in wonder at the singer, a fadista of immense girth
And yet with a faded beauty reminiscent of a giant rhododendron
Crapped upon by the cruel jackdaws and ravens of remorseless fate;
Her melodramatically tragic warblings seemed to come from
Within her very bowels, so heartfelt were they, so plangently terrifying
In their demented lovelorn tragedy and hopeless longing for stiff dick.

After the old trout had finished her verismo vocal peroration
She waddled over to me and whispered in my shell-like:
'Allo, tasty young man, are you Eenglish, I theenk, maybe from
bootoofil Ingles town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, magnifica cidade,
Jewel do norte da Inglaterra e home of greatest gringo lovers
ever to walk the fucking terra firma, already, pet?

Verily I was stunned by these perspicacious observations,
How the holy fuck could the fat auld hinny know of my provenance,
My wondrous birthright from the mighty metropolis on the Tyne,
That fluminous gem of the north, and its gorgeous Gosforth suburb?
But even as my grey cells whirred confusedly in deep amaze,
The saucy florid cow had grabbed me by the paw and hauled me off.

Upstairs we went to what she later called her ninho de amor,
A squalid den of sweaty sex with a crumpled bed in one corner
And a disused cracked uric crystal-encrusted bidet in the other,
Over which she creakily bent, proffering her withered butts to me
With a grunted command to give her one: "Não se preocupe, baby,
I don't got no pox or crabs, I am clean as 5 star hotel toilet."

And thus began our sordid affair: in between her fado sessions
In the bar downstairs we rutted like two filthy beasts of the field;
And I shall never forget the wire-wool texture of her grizzled bush
Or the spectacular size of her hooded clitoris (dear Lord above,
'twas bigger than a tomcat's tool but of a somewhat purpler hue);
Yea, the sight is etched into my memory like a brand on a bullock's arse.

'Twas on the third day when, risen again by the old bat's urgent demands,
That I learned how the aged Henrietta had known I was a Novocastrian:
She had been forcibly seduced by a Geordie sailor, Brian by name,
Who was the spitting image of moi, Barry, the great Bard of Gosforth!
O sweet Jesus, how clearly I could remember Grandpa Bri boasting how
He'd once met the world's filthiest slut in a Portuguese whorehouse!

Bugger me, as I gazed in horror at that old slag snoring like a sated rhino,
I could recall Gramps' dying words to me as he lay on his death bed,
An empty bottle of Newcastle Brown on the adjacent occasional table:
"Whoa, Barry, Ah've nivver had a shag the like of that wee hoor,
nivver in me born days, man, she had an erse on her like a coupla
giant watermelons and the smell was enough to knock yer sideways."

And now fifty long years had gone by and Fate's fickle finger
Had prodded me, causing me to caress the same saucer-sized nipples
As my dear old dead Grandfather had drooled over so long ago.
It was only when old Henrietta told me that the retard barman downstairs
Was the fruit of her 'Eenglish' sailor lover's loins that I finally knew
I had to flee from this degenerate maelstrom of Lusitanian lust and sin.

To think that Enrico the sweaty drunken retard was my half-uncle,
O the indelible stain on my family escutcheon were this ever to be known
In the leafy glades of respectable Gosforth; my dear old Papa
Would turn in his grave (or more specifically in his posh marble urn)
To have known he had a half-brother with breath like a noisome sewer
And rancid armpit stains bigger and browner than Yorkshire Pudding tins.

It was with something approaching genuine regret that I bade farewell
To my dear octogenarian tart; and how truly and deeply I was moved
When I read in the newspapers that the body of of Lisbon's oldest fadista
Had been found lying on the savage rocks out at the Boca do Inferno;
But I rationalised her doom at the gates of Hell: what else was left to her
After having enjoyed the favours of two of Tyneside's greatest cocksmen?