I saw a cow
Six or seven months in calf
Sold for seventeen-hundred guineas
I borrowed a book
Writing Poetry
By Doris Corti
With an introduction
Which I mistook
For being about me
Galvanised railings
Concrete slabs
For our seats
The auctioneers rattle
Repeats and repeats
I fear I face untold deceit
Sadness
On reflection
Surefooted the sun shone
On through
Valuers & Surveyor
Where I saw a cow
Six or seven months in calf
Old books
Bones
Tears of dried up dust
Parchment
Pretty pinks
Artists on the candelabra caper
Eyes closed
Eyes less than halfway
Wide open
Turned stones
Clay specks
Decked on dormant rust
Just because you can
Indeed so much
That you must
Just because I am
In the time
I learned to trust
Old books
Where now the repetition
Translated from dawn till dusk
By the shores of the longest river
With the still smooth pebble
Skipping on the water
Parchment
Where now Egyptian paper
Stated in fair governance
By the night of the oldest moon
With the still smooth dream
In the palm of your hand
Illiterate
Drives its own confusion
I will
I will
I will become obsessed
A peasant's son
Casts its own
No don't go there
Walk away
Walk away
No stay, pray do become
I thought I was angry
You spilt the uncollected blood
I chose a word of fancy
You knew; my own milk wood
Luddites in the valley
Geese in grandma's yard
The pictures of tomorrow
Sally, kissing old Tom Stoppard
That butterfly
Caught up in the spiders web
She swayed
With some knowledge of chaos theory
Flap long and hard enough
Dazed but not confused
You will always get away
Unscathed but bruised
I thought I was angry
You asked me if I could
I spoke of Reagan's Nancy
You know, that kind of neighbourhood
You can't break the machines now lad
You know; the looms and such stuff
You see with smoke and mirrors
We've bought the software bluff
Are you a young man
Or an old man, living your life
In reverse
Are you always striving
Belligerent, repugnant
With disquiet in your verse
The picture on the counter
Is of a cornfield
Bordered by poppies
The tyre with its worn weald
Is buggered
And that my lad is fact
To have all of this pleasure
With the pencil and the pen
In defence and attack
The picture is on a thank you card
'Fields of Flowers' by Julia Hawkins
An image sniffed by Crabtree and Evelyn
Am I the young man
In an old mans shoes
Giving or taking, or worse
Am I always dreaming
Beauty, softness, love
Lost therein, within my verse
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet
Philip Larkin: Whitsun Weddings
I am a Yorkshireman, that is, I was
Born in the West Riding, and then spent
My formative years on God's side of the Pennines
For over 35 years the valleys and the villages
They were my home; to drink real ale, play football
Although my granddad, he would have said to laike
One among many; it felt that I was chosen, special
A hop-stepped heritage to a clay works manager
But labourer, with barrow, was my direct blood line
It was easy to let praise be heaped upon me
No difficulty to be the centrepiece
The team captain, the leader of the socialist free
During years of working on my knees, I matriculated
After that business, of skipping out of all my GCE's
Now I live a slower life, on flat-lands of Lincolnshire
Where the Wolds are my Pennines
And the populous marshes are my unpopulated
Desolate, and beautifully dark peat moors
Again I study, but this time with convention
At the University of NTU, and with you most nights
In bright white lights of darkness, of life
Between here, there, then and now, this and that
I did a few things; came by chance to be a manager
Though it wasn't to be, not really me, you see
Perhaps I should tell you, that in the last weeks
I have seen two cinema films: Dr Zhivago and er…
No, I forget the name of the other
And I notice, that on more than one occasion
I have left off the letter which completes
A word or phrase, leaving it without meaning
Useless as an address on a letter
Eliding to become a lost letter, intent sent instead
To the dead letter office
Yesterday my poetry tried to have attitude
I think it was maybe inspired, by that
Tear jerker of a Prime Minister’s speech
But the anger will not well up so so easily
The causes for which I care are already taken
By other leaders; with their more extraordinary flare
So I sit and stare, I sit and stare and think
The drink of tea with cake is my companion
I have no trouble moving slowly, instinctive you see
Gentle be the time, to read of cull and carrion
Lone Ranger, Tonto and the white stallion
I forget his name, hi ho
The rain has started to fall, it drips off the ivy
The breeze is up; soon trees will be free of leaves
Yes, Lincolnshire; where my sky will meet my sea
