Why pearls on the bobble hat
Not God in empty trick green fields
Not Nature fenced
Why girl with sharp axe face hair thinning
Run of mutilated trees goes into town
Corn stubble itches in treacle heat
Black beams crisscross
Patches of before
This solvent head place isn't easy
Neither there nor here
Fishing huts about the square dull pond
Runcorn bridge in vanishing ink
Up from mildewed dream blinking
A tree is ivy eaten to alone
Moldering sleepers pile
Woman thumbs her everyday words
Nowhere without strings of electricity
Until chosen space heroic over
A beautiful Birkenhead girl waiting here
The whole city kisses us hello
I like the venturing out into another city as complicated and interesting as your own -- the distance created by a degree of "outsider"-hood changes the perspective.
ReplyDeleteMerseyside has to be its own universe, still. I see where the kids have geared up from sniffing common glue to sniffing the more pricey chemical solvents used to clean automobile wheels. Upscale, the way of the world, euphoria today (a denial of poverty anyway), termination tomorrow.
But not till after Citeh falls, on the day...
And in any case, headful of industrial chemicals or no, You'll Never Walk Alone.
wow !!! just read it could feel the journey u were writing about and loved the ending !!!! off to get some tissues xxxx
ReplyDeleteIt's a great city; the heart always jumps a little when we're coming in.
ReplyDeleteThe solvents have never gone out of fashion.
You know the words.
Lou, seeing that it's you at the end, what's not to love.
Some interesting archival footage here:
ReplyDeleteLife and Times -- Memories of Merseyside
... and haven't we at some time conversed about the wondrous Terence Davies hymn to Time and the City... -- or am I imagining that?
ReplyDeleteNo, you're not imagining it.
ReplyDeleteDavies is incomparable and that sequence is perhaps the most beautiful in a beautiful film. I love the moment where the children can be heard singing alongside Gheorgiu.