Poems from the archives of Poetry North East

Détente




Nothing, in the certainty of knowing goes


evermore regretfully, but this shadow,


an intimacy, which


lengthening through the cool dust of an evening,


dies along these, our familiar streets,


darkly, and in its own quietness.




                                             George Charlton






The North East




Her face is like the murky, muggy Tyne


Belching her detritus into the sea


Of emptiness


Which no face-lift can efface and leave fine.




Your head is like Consett’s skyline


Which tears at the sky like broken marble


Trying to pull it down to shield its children of


Iron and steel born in the black furnace.




Your eye are like the embers of a dull fire


Fighting to keep alive


But losing and dying


Bearing the craters in tranquillity.




Your brain is still alive


The railway lines sprawling across


Your body which feels the pain.




Your mind counts each loss


Like the machine that replaced it,


But could not the monotonous


Beating of the waves – the final humility.




I see nobody, only a mind


Which could not succumb today.


That life is still living in the


Beauty of its birth of yesterday.




                                             Tim Heavisides