WHERE THE BATTLE RAGES

 YOU DON'T KNOW ME   You don't know me Though once you did  Knew me best of all Knew me inside out  And upside down All my thoughts And all my moods Knew me better  Than I know myself  Now I'm just a face  A puzzle and a chore  Save for glints  A fleeting smile When you half guess At who I might have been  You don't know me  But I know you And that's all right  I'll know for us both

THE ONLY DAY All across the subdued hills Falls a breathless pall As our crude flesh is hallowed In blood and afterbirth    Nature shrinks from Otherness  The base before the Royal  As God's umbilical cord is cut  And Yahweh laid in hay  The Creator is created!  The squirming, wrinkled Lord!    High Heaven has been humbled Omnipotence in clay  Hail this the trembling Day of Days! Hail this most momentous Day!  Hail this, the one and only Day There has ever really been

IF   NOBODY SEES      So many, say you?  Well, nobody sees Behind those doors   In labs agleam 'Blob' in, 'waste' out Where nobody sees  With white-coats and smiles And biscuits and tea And nary a soul there So nobody sees   We've hidden our work Where no eye can pry  And isn't it OK   If nobody sees?

THAT SPECK OF TIME     To have again that speck of Time  To hold anew that briefest while   A heartbeat of a certain day When my whole world was washed away So much Time both now and past Time in reams and yards and tracts!  Sprawls unused and all around  Meanders by in fruitless hours When just the barest speck I crave Just one hour of that potent day  If just that speck I could wrest To stand again on Canaan's crest I'd take the road that Frost eschewed  And claim the tide that Roman used That merest moment could erase  An endless stream of Esau tears  Yet the Lord will not relent Grant to bring that chance again   Not for just a tick of Time   Will those stars again align  That heartbeat of a certain day When my whole world was washed away 

OF MUFFLED MALLS & STRANGLED SHOPS    Muffled malls and empty yards Strangled shops with fake facades Empty plots fill silent streets  Marking out the long retreat  Of family firms from dawn of days Who just gave up and went away Leaving takeaways and choking vapes Mini marts with minging paint     Where surly guards ward blinking lights Bets and slots and corporate vice  And snuffling strangers snort for change In sleeping bags in smelly lanes  Discount stores and discount lives   Discount souls clutch sausage rolls  Echoing streets and scattered stalls Mark and mourn the tragic fall  Bereaved of bustle and trader's praise  No tinkers, tailors, market days   No butcher, cobbler, wafting bread  No soul, no heart, for all is dead 

  ONCE   Again recall that once I was In a world of kindly voice   I think of sight and faded sound  Smell once more that final frost Was then a son that mother knew   Then had friends not all alone   I know I cried but now can not  Know I laughed but hence can not    Once I lived now only feel Once I spoke now only pain Sun and stars beyond recall Air and light now clean forgot    I once was there but now am not 

SKERNY OLD RIVER Skerny old river  Must you keep skerning Skerning on to the Tees? Birthed in slime, thy father foam  Baptised in mud that Time withstood  A sluggish slew of sludge serene  Why it never clears  Born to bear that muddy name   Skerny old stream!  Skerny old river  Must you keep skerning Skerning on to the Tees?