Just as a (non-sectarian) coda to our last discussion, here are a few poems
from Tom Pickard's High on the Walls (1967):
NENTHEAD
The lead long drawn
from the mines
and the miners dead
Their deserted workings
are left
like monuments
where the crag crumbles
and the murmur turns
the stone to sand.
The ghostly trickle
of the stream
has washed away the silt
and a soul
poured into me
THE DECADENT VOYEURS
They pass factories and pits and poverty
in flashy cars, and spit;
and return to coal warm fires
which from the earth
these other men had ripped
BIRTHPLACE-BRONCHITIS
(for Robert Pickard and John Wilson)
The old men cannot walk up banks
without peaving brown cockles on the path.
They spend their days at pigeon-ducketts
watching tumblers and trains.
They're on the sick
and cannot leave their pain.
The thudding industrial hammer
is not much harder thasn the men it has made.
Our fathers are coughing up its grimy flem
and we will know the taste
FORBIDDEN BIRTH
baby-juice
spluttering and bursting
I suppose inside is dark
because of you
your first sight still the womb's first light
fresh with blood of you
do you know that people make you covered up
your little cave?
I feel your little cave
and want to see you all the time
I thumb the navel and spread my fingers
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