Greenlane Poetry

2025 Four Chimneys
2025 Harraga
2025 Lilacs
2025 Routine Visit
2025 Sawn Moor
2025 September
2025 Solstice
All Saints 3pm
Bad Day
Bar des Sports, Charly-sur-Marne
Before and After the Watershed
Call to Witness
Carte Postale
Charlie
Clerk of Works
Dedication
Dog in the Night
Easter Saturday at Festubert
Fargate
first
Force Nine
Forge Island
Four Days in Town
Furnaces
Gwen G
Half Empty
In Glen Howe Park
In Provence
Incident
Kilner's Bridge
Lady
Last Train
Location
Magpies
Man dn Dog
Mungy Lane
North Line
Nurses
Outfield
Painting By Numbers
Passiontide
Patriots
Per Ardua
Pioneers
Poor Pierre
Progress
Release
Rememberings
Romeny
Runner
Spring Training
Start-1
Students in Crookesmoor
Thatcher
The Don at Swinton
The Festive Season
The Hawk in the Tree
The Lavender Feast at Saullt
The Runners in the Fields
The Seasons
Treatment Days
Trips to the Seaside
Up Train
Valley Mist
vase of Flowers
Weston Park
WestWind
What Love Is
Winthrop Park

--chosen-work--

Per Ardua



A rising tarmac path
puddled, by the old graves.
Naked trees; those with leaves left
barely orange.
The old church windows barred against the yobs
deserted save the buffeted drivers
shuttle ferry for our
farewell flowers.

Inside the modern block
no swish or squeal or thrust of city cars.

Dear Friends remember God's promises
Pray for our Dear Friend Departed
File in sit stand sit stand file out
our hushed respect outlives the numbing cold
the numbing service.

By fire he lived, by fire he now departs
Fire of the thumping presses
and then in the night sky where
many died but fire passed him by
And then his fire was in the heart
and in the soul

Where the strip mill was-
ragwort and open sky and a thousand ghosts
The only fire now the anger
and despair at what we have become

Dear Friends we come to claim God's promises
We shall all be changed.
We once moved the earth
stars spun round our heads
But we roared and sang in the bright morning
and in the dim evening laughed

Now here in the wet grass the blackened trees
the high rise and the shutters
Shaz luvs Dave: Park only on the Paths.
A low yew hedge marks off the garden
now the flowers marked in days,
Monday's petals browning now

This rising city will soon forget
him and his and those who died by him
The Lord was not in the Fire
which passed him by
But in the fire in the heart.

Broken walls and endless levelled buildings know


for Jack Fellowes
Lancaster Tail-gunner
RAF WW2
20.11.87