Gone Not Gentle

GONE NOT GENTLE

on spindrift pages
from the raging moon he wrote
for heedless lovers

by St.Martin's Church
poetry pilgrims honour
a simple white cross

at the Lamb & Flag
talk is of a drunken poet
stripping off his shirt

in the U.S.A.
professors then young students
recall his last lecture

curtains still open
in a thousand small theatres
to Under Milk Wood

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 15th December 1993

Publications

1994 Purple Patch (UK)
1994 Current Accounts (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1998 Black Creek Review (USA)
1998 Perihelion (Internet)
1998 Black Creek Review (Internet)

Lawrence

LAWRENCE

Lawrence never owned up to show you
How to catch flies with a life on landing.
If she pricked her lung and lips, honestly,
It would not have taught her anything
About the short story neatly tied
A lesser man does not get stranded in the sky.
The girl continued with moral injunctions against Freud.
They must be republished for they were not
Whipped but spit on the walls
And wanted language to the end of breath.
Though it has been accepted,
He cries at her nakedness.
In new forms, whose hands
Could have the realm of absorption shoved down
As faded tenderness to us
In soft summer breeze poetry?
Splashing through unity,
Kicking, smashing decorously into captivity,
He whimpers to the message in time
So we can keep it as aversion of colliding steel,
While she kicks him up to the edges of art.

© Gerald England

Composed: Gee Cross, 5th November 1993

Publications

1998 Boggers All (UK)
1998 Black Creek Review (USA)
1998 Black Creek Review (Internet)

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)

Lands End

               LANDS END

               The island cries
               Its tears are lost
               in the spray of the racing surf
               The rock hurts
               Pain penetrates each stratum
               The gas is low
               The kettle boils but slowly
               Cove and Cape concentrate the anger of rain
               Water persists in clouds
               In the morning of Good Friday
               the sun celebrates silence
               Early risers chew noisily
               on hot-cross-buns
               It is silly to talk of islands
               that do not cry
               or of rocks that feel no pain
               On the edge
               no man is untouched
               Behind all showers
               a rainbow hides

              © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Sennen, 20th April 1985

Publications

1985 Pennine Platform (UK)
1986 FUTURES (Ipswich, Magic Pen Press)
1990 Spider Eyes (USA)
1993 Dial 174 (UK)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)

First Morning

FIRST MORNING

having woken, coffeed,
walked the dog -
overcoat over pyjamas -,
we draw curtains
to a girl riding by
where the bridle path
skirts our field;
the wind blows
from the motorway;
the rain comes
over the railway line;
here we wait
to hitch ourselves
onto the new year

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ackworth, 1st January 1984

Publications

1988 QUADRA PROJECT: TEN POSTCARDS (Detroit Art Workshops)
1994 Green's Magazine (Canada)
1998 Black Creek Review (USA)
1998 Black Creek Review (Internet)

In Deep

IN DEEP

there were several entrances
indeed there were several holes
some holes were inside other holes
possible exits were only ends
with little room for turning
or else they led to other holes
there were ways out
but only for the slim and fit
or the very fat and strong

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Oldham, 12th February 1983

Publications

1989 Short Fuse (USA)
1990 Lizzengreasy Magazine (Japan)
1992 Odyssey (UK)
1994 Apostrophe (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1998 NASA (USA)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)

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)

Intercity

INTERCITY

Sharing its route with slow canals
meandering rivers, rolling lanes and rapid roads,
the breakfastless train sped hungrily
from a cold city of silent warmth
to a smoking hot metropolis
where compassion melted
and was lost among manipulative
manoeuvrings of committees

Walking the streets as a penance
revealed much more than all
the fruitless travelling underground
Though the high notes were out of tune
the melody of the flautist by the market
where Punch and Judy first were seen
accorded well with the day's mood
and left one memory that may alone remain
when all the rest is best forgot

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: London, 15th May 1979

Publications

1990 Eavesdropper (UK)
1995 TOPS (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)
2001 Mir (USA)

On The Death of The Actor

ON THE DEATH OF THE ACTOR

Why is it so dark in this theatre?
is the play over?
Has the audience gone?
Have the actors left the stage?
Why is this theatre so dark?

Your part in the play is over
The actors are still on stage
There has never been much of an audience
We have written out your part
You won't be replaced,
though there'll be others to follow
We still see the light
The darkness is your last, dying illusion

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Sheffield, 14th February 1973

Publications

1973 Wheels (UK)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)

Mort de Vagabond, after Legros

Online image available at The Art Institute of Chicago.

"MORT DE VAGABOND",
AFTER LEGROS

(Knoedler Gallery, New York)

The tramp
the tree
these two
both old
both grey
the tree perhaps
         already
         dead
But yet there is
stark beauty
in the tree
There is nothing of beauty
about the tramp
who is not
       yet
       dead
He lies forlorn
and stiff
His bones of legs
lie straight
and arms that are same
lie same
Feet that have touched
the earth
point heavenward
And eyes
that have seen raw life
stare blankly
as of one
who does not fear to die

© Gerald England

Composed: Ackworth, 26th June 1968

Publications

1973 Roots (UK)
1988 Waterways (USA)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)