Searchday Thursday

SEARCHDAY THURSDAY

(On Thursday November 20th, 1986 the search resumed on 
Saddleworth Moor for victims of the "Moors Murders")

                    I

Hattersley has a quiet look today
swept by the showers and the south-west wind
people wait at bus-stops still joking,
but at the Catholics' coffee-morning
the talk is of Ian and Myra,
of bitter resentment and a little hope
for the unrest of twenty-one years
will not lie down so easily.

                   II

noontime — a rainbow
reaches from Mottram — dark clouds
over Saddleworth

                  III

High above Dovestones
sixty police in orange suits
cordon off moorland,
dog-track across the heather scrub.

Half a mile away at the mobile caf'
where the Pennine Way crosses the road
ITN and others are parked —
watching, waiting, reporting.

It will not be a short time
for those who have waited twenty years;
their worst fears unconfirmed
their heartaches buried deep.

Whatever is found
beneath the imprisoning peat
not everyone's hope
will find release.

© Gerald England

Composed: Greenfield, 20th November 1986

Publications

1989 A POEM FOR DADDY (Whitby, Canada, Plowman)
1997 Lateral Moves (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)