TO BRENDA WILLIAMS ON HER FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY
The years become you as Oxford becomes you, As you became Oxford through the protest years; From Magdalen’s grey gargoyles to its bridge in May, From the cement buttresses of Wellington Square To Balliol,
PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY
I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast returning empty. The coal office manager was a dwarf With sixty year old skin
A HOPE FOR POETRY: REMEMBERING THE SIXTIES
There was a hope for poetry in the sixties And for education and society, teachers free To do as they wanted: I could and did teach Poetry and art all day and little else
PULLED FROM A LIFE SOME LEAVES
Pulled from a life some leaves in evergreen Or dressed like fragrant crinoline draped Over shadows by di Chirico, stolen From a station where trains never run And set up in a tableau in
GROTTY AND THE QUARRYMAN
(To Paul Sykes, author of ‘Sweet Agony’) He demolished five doors at a sitting And topped it off with an outsize window One Christmas afternoon, when drunk; Sober he smiled like an angel, bowed,
MY FATHER
I had a father once, the records say. He has gone away down the long avenue Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist Of his breath, his firm signature no more. No more
LETTER FROM HAWORTH
Poems do not always satisfy the soul, The feel of cobbles underfoot is at this moment more Than all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the unending vistas Of the moor, an infinity of purity that excels
A GRIEF
Rivers, tow paths, caravan parks From Kirkstall to Keighley The track’s ribbon flaps Like Margaret’s whirling and twirling At ten with her pink-tied hair And blue-check patterned frock O my lost beloved Mills fall
HAPPY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY CARCANET BOOKS
Sorry, I almost forgot, but I don’t think Its worth the effort to become a Carcanet poet With my mug-shot on art gloss paper In your catalogue as big as Mont Blanc Easier to
TO DAISY ABEY
In sleep I dream the gratitude I know I cannot say Now you are in a latitude where palm trees hold the sway There are always things between us that keep getting in the
Bridge Over The Aire Book 6
THE WALK TO THE PARADISE GARDENS 1 Bonfire Night beckoned us to the bridge By Saint Hilda’s where we started down Knostrop to chump but I trailed behind With Margaret when it was late
A CALL TO ARMS
It was like chucking-out time In a rough Victorian pub Cherubic Dylan was first to go Lachrymose but with a show Of strength, yelling “Buggerall, Buggerall, this is my boat-house In Laugherne, these are
WAITING
I am waiting for the sky to flower Like poems in a winter mind: And yet they come, maybe trailing along An urchin gang, sobbing and snotty-nosed.
A MEETING WITH THE PRINCESS
Just a family get-together in a terrace house in Bradford High tea with a few stuffy aunts I hadn’t seen for years Their husbands in tow like lost dogs sniffing round for food But
CHANGE
As milled silver I was welcome In every gutter, tinkling over cobbles I rang the truth loudly on solid-oak counters And tills tolled for me clear as bells. Boldly I gave myself to many,