Grainger Market 1970

Cold red meat laid to rest
on white marble slabs.

Stinking cheeses
and farm fresh eggs.

Flowers for all occasions:
Red roses, white lillies.

Naval oranges
and golden delicious.

Mouth-watering music
from the records stand.


Catherine Graham

A PORTRAIT OF THE GRAINGER MARKET BY THE TYNESIDE POETS - FROM 1973

this is life
the gloss and the flesh

weigh-house of passion and flame

you can get lost in this market’s amazement

but you can never lose yourself

sometimes

a sleep-walk in these grazing crowds

can feel like a stroll through your brain

Keith Armstrong

A city

within a city

light cage

bazaar and blind

these swollen alleys

flow with a teeming life’s blood

Geordie !

Swim for your life !

Keith Armstrong

ODE TO THE GRAINGER MARKET

You, Grainger Market, aged Patriarch,

Quaint backdrop of our childhhod’s crazy dawn.

Edwardian giantess; stiff, grounded Angel.

From Nun Street, still, your steel-webbed dentures gleam.

Uplifted shop-flanked avenue, curved arches,

Our fathers and grandfathers here were green.

The cool, invidious housewife with crooked elbows

Takes pleasure home in bags. Years melt between.

Butchers, optician, chemist, haberdashers;

The cleaver’s clang, the swish of brush or broom;

The General Weigh-house – favourite of grandmothers,

The flower’s faint breath, the laurel’s undying gloom.

The scent of amorous bouquets, vague Death’s pungent smell,

Tropical fruits, leather, split carcasses;

The musty smell of bodies and old books

Mingling with odours rank and chemical.

The sound of clanging voices, shuffling feet,

Clamour and movement, taut, mechanical;

The thrust and press of bodies, sweat and heat;

Excitement, lifting, falling, like a church bell.

The present and the past; authentic life

Moving out of estrangement and blank streets

Into white wishes and Epiphany

A near event, cancelling death and pain.

Insouciant childhood hours, swift adolescent years

Are spectral here, rustling fusty leaves

In secondhand book-shops, fingering with more

I light this candled Altar’s eulogy to You

Heart of the dreaming city; mine and yours.

Knowing that in you halts the great encounter

That though all else may change: you will be ours.

You, Grainger Market, aged Patriarch

Across the desert of the years are gazing

Like Abram from his tent, while Angels come,

And in the cool evening – you remember.

What bones in city graveyards are forgetting,

What stiff-necked statues can no longer praise,

Life’s natural fulfilment, love’s tender joyous giving

You, place of meeting, from oblivious raise.

Faint Memory’s penumbra echoing

Through wrought-iron gates of shuttered evening:

Your Great Heart almost motionless, unheard, unseen

Is waiting yet the days axed by no planner’s

Bald and concrete dream.

Alan C. Brown

ODE TO THE GRAINGER MARKET

In the light of winter they shovelled your snow,

And banged their hands in the lantern’s glow,

Now, as then, from village and town

To the city they tumble in suit and gown.

And the mice ran merry in booth and rafter,

Top-hatted the street-cabs’ careless laughter,

From ox and fen and chicken pen

They took their tally and bartered like men.

Now the muddy ways are back again

And the town reshapes round the planner’s pen;

New things for old, black stones buy gold,

One by one sooty buildings come into the fold.

Who’ll by my town ? Who’ll buy my town ?

A sample of water straight from the Tyne,

“Chateau de Jesmond Dene” potent as wine,

A thirty three bus complete with its crew

Has rarity value – the graffiti’s brand new !

Who’ll buy my town ? who’ll buy my town ?

Ring out the old and ring in the new –

Here’s grass from the Moor freshly chewed by a cow

And the breath in the bottle’s a love word I knew.

Buy these footsteps, these gestures, these columns of print,

Buy these births, deaths and marriages, make your eyes squint.

Here’s a two, here’s a two, your bingo card’s up

And this baby’s for you.

Thro away town ? Throw away men ?

Who’ll put my market together again ?

Here’s perfume from Africa made by a witch,

Some strikers for matches, the matches, the foreman’s got a stitch.

Three golden whippets mounted on coal,

A genuine facsimile of Robledo’s goal.

Come and buy, come and buy, put hairs on your chest,

Here’s a fossil pork-pie from the old Crow’s Nest,

An unwashed glass from the old Dun Cow for your throttle

And the whole of Sandyford Road in a bottle !

Come and buy, come and buy,

Throw away streets ! Throw away men !

Who’ll put Newcastle together again ?

Change your fancies, your fashions,

Your records, your love

Change your stones, change your rings, this is your glove;

It fits you now as it fitted you then,

Throw away town ? Throw away men ?

Who’ll put my market together again ?

Two pence off this, three pence of that,

With every new car you get a free cat,

Thousands of stamps and a free flying bat.

Throw a way garbage, throwaway streets,

Five dozen varieties, folding seats.

Come and buy, come and buy, liquorice allsorts, fine potted meats

Throwaway town ? Throwaway men ?

Who’ll put my market together again ?

Jim Greigh

POEM FOR MAUD

bred in a market arch

a struggle

in a city’s armpit

that flower

in your time-rough hand’s

a beautiful girl in a slum alley

all that kindness in your face

and you’re right

the time are not what they were

this England’s not what it was

flowers shrink in the crumbling vase

dusk creeps in on a cart

and Maud the sun is choking

Maud this island’s sinking

and all that sleeping sea is

the silent majority

waving

Keith Armstrong

FLOWERS

Crucifixes of woven ferns,

haloes of blossoms, the floral

appurtenances of death

heaped in gaudy profusion

along tiers of artificial

grass; giraffe-necked vases

spitting sprays of purple

rushes into scent-crammed air.

Beneath a high roof of cloud-

mottled glass an alley of

commercial swamps glares sultry

luxuriance against grey crowds.

For blazing lovers, bunched and

be-ribboned roses glossy

with tears; brittle sheaves of

bluebells for strewing at

the feet of plaster saints;

odoriferous conglomerations

of colours guaranteed to

bring soporific bliss

to hushed terminal wards;

tribes of hot-house orchids

mauled by leprous dusts,

vivid petals tumbling

onto the backs of snoozing cats.

From musty shadows discreet

rows of memorial urns shine

their golden R.I.P.’s

upon passing immortals.

Michael Wilkin

MEAT

Lanes of slit carcasses,

black blood swallowed by sawdust;

vagabond dogs loaf around

mounds of discarded entrails.

Hares and rabbits strung-up

in precise military rows,

neat bullet-holes glimmering

like medals through scorched fur,

the idiot grins of death

suspended from gleaming hooks.

Bundles of sparkling plumage,

trussed pheasants hovering

above trays of glittering guts.

Venison for asking,

purple tongues loll

from crushed mouths,

city children gaze

into eyes brimful

with the quietude

of ghostly forests.

Apprentices swab scarred

chopping-blocks, weals

of caked reds

streak their aprons;

whistling, they muscle

barrow-loads of decapitated

pigs through ambling crowds.

A Venus of the cleaver

stuns my heart, a loud rose

pinned above her jutting

breasts, she hacks

a lamb in half

with consummate ease,

an ersatz boater

tilted a la Chevalier

across her blond brow.

A goddess of silversides

Sauntering gazelle-like

Within a crimson cage,

Wrapping cutlets with lissom

Grace, scornful of my stammering

Presence, her eyes stampede

Across my slovenly smile

As she pole-axes me to a

Slaughter-house of oblivion.

Michael Wilkin