Quiet Christmas

QUIET CHRISTMAS

We had a very quiet Christmas
I lost my voice on Christmas Eve
I looked for it in my cup of coffee
but it wasn't there to be found
I sifted the dust from under the bed
It was not there
I accused the Northeast wind
but it did not blow off course
I searched the sheep on the high moors
It wasn't to be seen

I heard the rattle of reindeer-feet
around the chimney-pots
The Christmas Tree Fairy coughed at me
and I found my voice
hanging on the seventh branch
between a robin and a plastic Santa.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 26th December 1980

Publications

1990 Never Bury Poetry (UK)
1994 Boggers All (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)

Beyond Glossop

BEYOND GLOSSOP

cats eyes?
beacons that light a roadside?

Snake Pass
midnight
winter

not cats'
but eyes of sheep
headlight-reflected pins

the dark shape
seen too late
squeal of brakes
crash of glass
a dying ewe bleats
silently

splinters of glass
from a broken headlamp
mix with mutton blood

the wind howls
the mountain streams cascade
there is no moon above the mist
there are no lights now

all is frozen

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 20th September 1980

Publications

1984 Aireings (UK)
1992 Hybrid (UK)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)

Tighe Mo Chaidhre

TIGHE MO CHAIDHRE

a place without a roof
without any walls
without a door
windows of mist
create transient privacy
snow freezes here
rain is turned to steam
the sun shines shyly
sometimes
there is a red river
flowing with food
there will be no starvation
until the beaver
dams the supply
to this home
my heart

GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 1st September 1980

Publications

1990 Candelabrum
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)

Rotterdam

ROTTERDAM

At this entrance to Europe
the Rhine leads past terminals
where the shipping of China, Britain,
Germany, Monrovia, even Holland
meet in the world's largest port.

Motorways flanked by wide grass verges
where rabbits run with the cyclists
take us to the rebuilt city
with its decorative painted lampposts
and the Post Office Peter Post designed.

Even the work of Picasso is not spared
by the artists of graffiti.

© Gerald England

Composed: Amsterdam, 8th July 1980

Publications

1994 The East & West Literary Quaterly (USA)
1994 The Good Society Review (UK)

Holland

HOLLAND

Here, where man has fought the sea and won,
an airport stands at the bottom of a lake,
a factory stands behind a lighthouse
with the wreck of a ship in a farmer's field
twenty kilometres from the present sea.
Called the Ijslemeer it was the Zuider Zee;
what was the sea is merely now a mere.
Dykes defend this vast expanse of polderland,
drained at vast expense, kept daily drained
against the sea that would reclaim its own.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: North Sea Ferries, 6th July 1980

Publications

1986 Aireings (UK)
1991 The Vincent Brothers Review (USA)
1999 Red Booth Review (Internet)

I Always Turn

I ALWAYS TURN

I always turn

upon mad dogs
bark back even

that way
i sometimes end up
with my back against the wall
not that all walls
are so thick
that you can't fall through

but mostly
they reject my challange
it's the chase they want
and they can't
chase you
when you face them

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 1st July 1980

Publications

1982 Global Tapestry Journal (UK)
1988 Groundworks (UK)
1989 Green's Magazine (Canada)
1990 Lizzengreasy Magazine (Japan)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)

Henry Winstanley

HENRY WINSTANLEY

Inventive practical joker,
what made you abandon
your imprisoning seats,
chairs that descended
or slowly rose, frightening
their occupants to the
delight of your family?

The sea had laughed at you
tossing two of your five ships
to pulp on the Eddystone reef.
You were not the first
who demanded action
having lost a valuable cargo
only sixteen miles from Plymouth.

But none else took up the challenge.

Who before had tried,
on an isolated, wave-swept rock
facing the full fury
of the wild Atlantic ocean,
to build a tower,
to light a light
to save seafarers?

Which dastardly French pirate
was it captured you there
and found himself the prisoner?
King Louis recognised your aim;
French ships too had foundered
on the treacherous Eddystone reef.
He was at war with England,
not with humanity.
Louis wined you, dined you,
set you free.

Three years in building,
you lit the candles yourself.
No ships were lost
on the Eddystone that year.
Your greatest wish
was to be in your tower
during the greatest storm
that ever was seen !

For four years your tower stood
until that November night,
seventeen hundred and three,
when your wish was granted.
Eight hundred houses in the
West of England collapsed;
one hundred and twenty-three
lost their lives on land;
at least eight thousand at sea.
Nothing of you nor your tower
remained at daylight.

Two days later the Winchelsea was lost.

Because your structure failed
to stay that storm
later lighthouse engineers knew
the mistakes that they then must avoid.
The way for safe shipping
and for safe design was possible
only after you had made
that original brave attempt.

© Gerald England

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 1st June 1980

Publication

2005 Sons of Camus Writers International Journal (Canada)

The Clearing of the Highlands

THE CLEARING OF THE HIGHLANDS

The year that Patric Sellar came to Strathnaver
black smoke hung along its length
from the homes so lately vacated by his tenants;
too late for one young woman who would not leave,
so perished in the flames, her unborn child within her.
Old men, led out in time, were laid
to die from frost instead of fire.

Some went meekly like the sheep that replaced them
down the road to the barren, rocky coast,
driving their salvaged beasts before them,
oats and barley left for the sheep to trample,
potatoes in their lazybeds left to rot.

A Lowland jury cleared him later of all charges.

Many were the poor and destitute in Bettyhill,
in Farr, in Tongue, in Golspie and in Helmsdale
who died later from cholera or famine.

Others, who could survive Atlantic storms
and carve new life from a frozen wasteland,
found Canada no more tough than Sutherland;
there are more Gaels in North America
than ever crossed the Minch.

Not only in Strathnaver but in every glen
and by the side of every ben
factors served writs, burnt out, moved on a people
betrayed by the chiefs for whom they had always fought,
but who now wanted a four-footed tenantry;

though not named Sellar
only their faces were different.

Seventeen babies died on the Street of Starvation
when six hundred people were cleared from Ulva
and dumped on Mull.

The lairds and Lowland shepherds said
it was for the "Improvement of the People"

- that vast peasantry
who lost their homes, their hopes
and the inheritance they had thought infinite ?

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 5th May 1980

Publications

1983 Moorlands Review (USA)
1985 SPEAK TO THE HILLS (Aberdeen University Press)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)
1993 The Frogmore Papers (UK)
1999 The Animist (Internet)

Ann Frank

ANN FRANK

 You said you wanted to live
      after you were dead
 No-one can deny you have
 But did you really live before?
 You tell us more by what
      you do not say

 You were the schoolgirl
      who talked too much
 and justified herself
      by talking even more
 Always you justified yourself
 even when you knew yourself wrong
 At bottom, position counts

 How secret did you keep your diary
      in the Secret Annexe?
 The others knew of it
 Can any have read it?
 They threatened it when they thought
      the enemy threatened

 They must have come quickly
 for you in the end
 Neither you nor they
      destroying its evidence
 Only rescued even then
 by office cleaners

 Was she not right
 whose pessimism you so
      harshly criticised?
 And what was it cracked your spirit
      finally?

 Was it the death of your sister?
 Or the strain of two years
 living so closely with hatred
      among friends?
 Or losing the lover you had gained
 in spite of your self and his?

 You talked always of feelings
 now, and sometimes then,
 but hardly ever talked
      of after

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 4th April 1980

Publications

1988 New Wave (USA)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 The Animist (Internet)

Sonnet for a Lost Roman Road

SONNET FOR A LOST ROMAN ROAD

Treading by compass the unseen line,
Following the way the Romans led,
Thinking only of the road ahead,
Looking for a place to realign,
Bringing their direction back to mine,
Fording then each river bed,
Crossing over each watershed,
Marvelling at such a straight design.

The stones lie mostly below the turf;
A barn there and an oak tree here
Point to this route no longer used
Under the land of some Saxon serf
Who ploughed his fields without a tear
For all the history he had seduced.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 1st February 1980

Publications

1986 Acumen (UK)
1989 Vigil (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)
2000 Manifold (UK)