A ballad
(21st-century North)
We drove by the ruined mills of Leek
In the dead time of the year
When the land had become like a faded song
We could no longer hear.
Down where the mouldering sandstone world
Of the Potteries blends with the weeds,
Where the warehouses echo with wandering winds
And the enmity gathers in beads,
Where the reservoirs seep to the pool of stars
And the sick are annulled in the night,
I was someone who failed like a light going out
In a dream on the edge of sight;
Where the powerful cling to their juggernaut arks
And the cities are sunken and bare,
I was someone who failed like a tumbling tower
On the edge of a kingdom of air.
We drove by the ruined mills of Leek
In the dead days of the year
When the land had become like a faded song
We could no longer hear.
The North..the Dead North?
ReplyDeleteThe best poet you will never have heard of...
http://www.shaunbelcher.com/writing/
Dead North M1 7 p.m.
Braided like D.N.A.
we flicker in a northbound lane
twined like flax
woven with fertilizer lorries, prostate flat-loads
tankers and porta-kabins
under digitised words
‘salt spreading’
Capital’s crawling artery
bunged northward creeps
each vein full of despatch
tall orders, whims and haste
precision marketing targets
the next truck reads
REALITY: realitygroup.com
I couldn’t make this up.
We pass Reality
and then ‘Real Distribution Solutions’
before skidding past ‘Future Logistics’
there is another script being read here
The exhausts liming the banks with its breath.
We are all headed dead North
Scott’s hand on the ledger waits.