THE PLAY HOUSE
We had a new house And split the decorating. You took the piled rolls of paper, While I stacked the cans of gloss, One to each corner-white-what else? And when we began our slow
THE CARDINAL LOOKS BACK
I was a good father to my people, Their houses among the terraced hills Adored God every day, grape-clusters on the vines Made Christ’s blood richer in the goblet My father gave me: the
Bridge Over The Aire Book 4
THE LANDS OF MY CHILDHOOD 1 I am leaving the holy city of Leeds For the last time for the first time Leaded domes of minarets in Kirkgate Market, the onion-dome of Ellerby Lane
THE SINGING SCHOOL
The Poetry School, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Business: So much poetry about you’d think I’d want to shout, “Hurray, hurray, Every day’s Poetry Day!” but I don’t and you don’t either- You
THE VANDAL
Someone has been tearing up the autumn, Its ripped leaves ripple across the road Flip liked hinged cards in the moist grass. The rain-varnished houses vanish in smoke, Drift on the air like blown-out
UNCLE BOB
Shell-shocked from Korea A grenade that left him The platoon’s only survivor, Put him in Stanley Royd For thirty years. He tailored there And out on weekend leaves He made and mended Everybody’s clothes,
GAUGUIN IN THE SOUTH SEAS
They have my own fear of the dark, Tupapau – spirits of the dead they call it; Returning late with oil I found fear of it Had spread my vabine naked on the bed.
THE GIFT
We were three weeks Into term, Sheila, When you came Through the classroom door; Forty-four children Bent over books, Copying Roethke’s ‘The Lost Son’. You wrote your First poem on the ‘Moses’ Of Michelangelo.
A FINE MADNESS
Any poets about or bored muses fancying a day out? Rainy, windy, cold Leeds City Station Half-way through its slow chaotic transformation Contractors’ morning break, overalls, hard hats and harness Flood McDonalds where I
A MEMORY AT SIXTY
They have vanished, the pop men with their varnished crates Of Tizer and dandy, American ice-cream soda and one percent shandy. The clunk of frothy quarts dumped on donkey-stoned doorsteps Is heard no more,
THE PHILOSOPHERS
Lavender musk rose from the volume I was reading through, The college crest impressed in gold, tooled gold lettering on the spine. It was not mine but my son’s, jammed in the corner of
THE FIRST MONTH OF THE YEAR
A page of the ‘Kelmscott’ Chaucer Seen through out cottage window When the Pennines were blind with snow Flurrying round the stones. The fire was low when I began to blow That single flicker
HUDDERSFIELD – THE SECOND POETRY CAPITAL OF ENGLAND
It brings to mind Swift leaving a fortune to Dublin ВЂFor the founding of a lunatic asylum – no place needs it more’. The breathing beauty of the moors and cheap accommodation Drew me
LETTERS TO FRIENDS
I Eddie Linden Dear Eddie we’ve not met Except upon the written page And at your age the wonder Is that you write at all When so many have gone under Or been split
Bridge Over The Aire Book 2
STANDING IN EDEN 1 Poetry claimed me young on Skegness beach Before I was born I answered her cry For a lost child still in the womb still As the seawave journeying green upon