INFAMOUS POET
I never did fit in – at six or sixty one – I stand out in a crowd, too young or old And gather pity like a shroud. “Is that real silk?” A teenager
RESURRECTION
I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’ As of the eye The bream or white-bait showed In its hysterical dance of death When the receding tide Left it asleep In a shallow pool on
PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS
I want a true history of my city FUCK THE DE LACY FAMILY AND DOUBLE FUCK JOHN OF GAUNT ESPECIALLY And all his descendants With their particular vilenesses – I met one in the
MORNING WALK
For Barbara I step off the pavement Like a precipice Engage the darting sunshafts In a duel In the wall’s shadow I web My prints to pattern The moist stone virgins. The lawns are
WITHOUT THE WHEREWITHALL
To Thushari Williams Dear Thushie, the six months you spent with us Will never be forgotten, the long days you laboured In the care home, your care-worn comings home To sit with Brenda Williams,
OUR SON
Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts Besiege his fevered imagination –
Bridge Over The Aire Book 5
MOORING POSTS 1 The mooring posts marked on the South Leeds map Of 1908 still line the Aire’s side, huge, red With rust, they stand by the Council’s Transpennine Trail opposite the bricked and
OPEN LETTER TO ANDY C
Sorry, Writer in Residence on the Great North Run The last thing I’d ever do is listen to your spin “You risk losing potential allies in your war against the philistines, Astley, Armitage, Duffy,
WINTER BLUES
For Penny Abraham I wish I had Auden’s penchant For going about in carpet slippers Or the late HRH Margaret’s panache- A chauffered Rolls with six outriders- This late December day with its sparkle
THE LAST DAY OF ANOTHER HOME HOLIDAY
I sat on a low stone wall Watching the blue blood of the azaleas Spatter on Haworth’s cobbles. A seamless transparency of rain Lowering over the turning trees My thoughts drifting to Claudel’s ‘Five
HUGHES' VOICE IN MY HEAD
As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain Like a tattered lacework window; Black glisten on roof slates, Tarmac turned to shining
REQUIESCAM
(May I lie in peace) Let there be grass and trees to blow And fold me in their shadow Branches to shake and leaves Turn brown, fall and lie fallow. Let there be moorlands
SORRY I MISSED YOU
(or ‘Huddersfield the Second Poetry Capital of England Re-visited’) What was it Janice Simmons said to me as James lay dying in Ireland? “Phone Peter Pegnall in Leeds, an ex-pupil of Jimmy’s. He’s organising
INSPIRATION FROM A VISITATION OF MY MUSE
Memories bursting like tears or waves On some lonely Adriatic shore Beating again and again Threshings of green sea foam Flecked like the marble Leonardo Chipped for his ‘Moses’. And my tears came as
THE INNOCENT EYE
I struggled through streets of Bricked-up, boarded-up houses, Mostly burned-out, keeping To the middle of the road, Watching the abandoned gardens With here and there a house Still lived in, curtained Against the daylight