Last orders was still half past ten,
When slipways hadn’t yet slipped away
Or mines been undermined. By day
The Quayside was grim, by night worse,
Except on the Sabbath, God’s curse
On commerce relaxed by hawkers,
Barrow boys and other jokers
With market stalls. The day before
Would have been SuperMac, the roar
Of the Leazes End, just a year
On from Mexico and the clear
Refrain…
“Ey, ey, ey, ey,
Someone has pinched my sombrero,
The dirty twat
Has pissed on my hat,
And now I’ve got nothing to wearo, wearo, wearo…”
Then it was Haymarket, Hotspur,
Farmers Rest, Brown Ale or Amber,
The first time shock of being offered
A pint of scotch. T Dan occurred
And Newcastle was up for change,
Loose change in pockets of a range
Of speculators. Local feelings
Losing out to opaque dealings,
“The fog on the Tyne
Is all mine, all mine,
Fog on the Tyne is all mine.”
But always there was poetry,
In pubs and clubs the verse set free,
Falling from the backs of lorries,
Carried on the breeze through the trees
Of Leazes Park, Exhibition
Park or any park the mission
Could be declaimed. Those were nights of
Open reading; of the heights of
Prosody we were the steeple
Jacks: Poetry to the People!
Then freewheeling fine thoughts were dished
And the seventies abolished
By the Iron Lady.
“You can’t touch me I’m part of the union,
You can’t touch me I’m part of the union,
You can’t touch me I’m part of the union,
Till the day I die, till the day I die.”
Two
score years
And more when necessity steers
Me away: the union is broken.
Time, like stanzas soon as spoken,
Passes. The Great North Road also
Drives south, four full counties below
Where Akenside and Spence left as well;
The High Level and Bridge Hotel,
St. James’ Park (at last) restored,
Morden Tower largely ingnored
And Tescopolis, where it’s said
There once stood the town of Gateshead.
Central Station announcers sing,
The poet now departing…
