Shining For Us All To See
When I was a boy we got Regent’s Street’s
hand me downs, our lights, last year’s
London glory strung up High Street,
along Fargate, down Pinstone Street’s
covered bus stops, twinkling by Woolies
and BHS to the foot of the Moor.
We were a city to be reckoned with
but even then, when the celebrity or dignitary
flipped the switch outside the Town Hall,
my mate Dave’s Dad, the city electrician,
on the other side of the Ladies toilet wall
would hear the knock and pull the proper lever.
Now the lights look like they are from out
of the loft nestling under Vulcan’s feet,
pulled out again, tired, unloved and lacklustre.
Signs of our undoing, our goose being cooked,
our being cut down to our civic wishbone,
to the quick of our democratic co-operabilty.
Drive around our streets now and you see
from Endcliffe to Shirecliffe’s glittering windows,
cornucopian luminosity, even a whole house front
like a Disney dreamland with a box for bystanders
and drive-bys to give to a worthy Sheffield cause,
all those who can afford to have a Santa clause.
Could we not get better ones, if each year
the half million of us, chucked in a quid,
a tick box on our council tax, like when
workers in steel and coal paid for a university,
in penny subs, left not a child behind in that
dream of illumination for the working mind.
Our bay windows and frontages are grand
but the great crowns over the 33 to Hemsworth
shining for us all to see, like a Christmas dream.
That would make us civic again, we could
buck the national trend, proving that municipal’s
not a dirty word it’s what will help us mend.
Winter Drive Along The A66
The white ashes of mist
soften the folded valleys,
the breath of December
has frost whitened our road,
from Scotch Corner to Brough
through Appleby to Penrith.
The trees are full of angels and ravens,
dark byres bearing new-born babes.
A Shepherd minds his hill born sheep,
snow gathering on the tweed of his cap.
White is the colour of death and life,
black is the starkness in between.
Moving through villages
the road is undulant,
repeatedly hidden,
ushering us past vernacular pubs
and lone, solid farmhouses
in rinds of hoarfrost.
The rivers have bridges that God
might use and the Rey Cross
marked the border between realms.
Norse kings bear holly berry blood,
praises for Woden’s day, and mistletoe
seed from Freya’s holy buds.
Oak and Ash are silhouetted letters
in fields like white paper.
Lines that are like litanies
to winter and quietness,
to splinters in brightness,
to mentor our calmness.
The ruts of wheels fill with mercury.
The hard and fast borders between
earth and sky no longer apply,
the white fields flow to white sky.
And we become in that one given,
received citizens of a wintry heaven.
A Sheffield Carol
Crown him, crown him, ringing out,
Silver notes and the songs of generations.
Faith in pubs, faith in landlords,
And Blake’s angels in Stannington’s boughs.
Villages kept this happy faith
when Churches turfed it out,
in favour of rule and rubric,
pride in a joyless redemption
from sins that didn’t bother god.
Crown him, crown him, singing out,
Silver notes and the songs of generations.
Faith in graft, faith in workers,
And Blake’s angels in Bradfield’s boughs.
Buy your pints and find a seat
In the flocking crowds,
from child to ninety,
lyrics passed down
from homespun soul to soul.
Crown him, crown him, arcing up,
Silver notes and the songs of generations.
Faith in love, faith in carers,
And Blake’s angels in Dungworth’s boughs.
Always the first two verses then the last,
As earthbound and seraphic
we join the swelling throng,
coddled in with cattle and
born to us from the forge.
Crown him, crown him, reaching up,
Silver notes and the songs of generations.
Faith in hills, faith in walkers,
And Blake’s angels in Worrall’s boughs.
Walk home under Sheffield stars
And count your blessings
That you live in such place
Where carols come in pubs
and the child sleeps in the corner.
Crown him, crown him, blazing out,
Silver notes and the songs of generations.
Faith in hearths, faith in welcome,
And Blake’s angels in Hillsborough’s boughs.
Francis and the Crib at Greccio
One witness, among the crowd …. reported that Francis included a carved doll which …. seemed to be wakened from sleep when the blessed Father embraced him in both arms.
He led them up the stony path
at dusk on Christmas eve.
He asked them to bring light,
so, with sticks dipped in pitch
and all manner of stubby candles
they followed him to the cave.
Gathering to a luminescence
in that rocky aperture
his Bethlehem, earthen womb,
a veiled threshold to heaven.
He had found a donkey,
cross backed and a cow,
udder full and calf needy,
and with straw he coaxed
them to settle into sleep.
And for the pallet of
golden forage, his hands,
long fingered and dexterous,
had carved a babe to incarnate,
in wood, the long awaited one.
John of Greccio,
whose cave it was,
witnessed the tears of Francis,
flowing in remembrance
of that uncertain birth
under imperial servitude.
And John was sure the
carven fingers uncurled,
chiselled eyes blinked back
the smokey lights
to see once more
wonder in the eyes of
villeins to liege lords.
Francis finally spoke of
the terrifying helplessness
that was undertaken to show
that each of us, womb born,
is a doorway to divinity.
And each saw the arc
of heaven stooping
into the ordinary and
the commonplace,
revealing each illuminated face
as god again, and again, and again
shouldering human form.
He lifted the sleeping
child who stirred miraculously,
cribbed in the tender love
of one who beheld what
thrones and dominations occlude,
what those who gaze upward never see.
