Wall

Rough lane towards Hagg Wood is metalled now,

Avenue of pebble-dash and open plan

Down to a stony track that parallels

A regular wall that’s certainly not new.

Well-dressed blocks of soot-blackened millstone

Stands shoulder high and heavily as it dwells

An urban curtain drawn round a rural

Aspect, a reservoir for a cotton town

Woven into the fabric of the valley

Below. Pause a moment. Peek over that wall

To watch ripples and eddies as they’re blown

Across couch grass where water used to be.

Was the water allowed to leak away

Like textiles from the town, and left fallow?

Dry stone walls straggle the distant moor

While this wall, round a res. drowned in soil, will stay

Put, unless there’s more pebble-dash to follow

Or stone has a price too high to ignore.

It stands for now, as dry stone walls tumble,

But, rub at the mortar and it crumbles.

                                                                                                                Dave Alton

Coifi's Spear

Convinced by the Kentish mission, Coifi contrived

To hurl his spear hard into Woden’s wooden heart.

Idols don’t flinch, of course, even when they’ve deceived

Generations. God dies! Another takes the part.

Gagarin looked from the limits of his portholes

All around the world. No God troubled his inspection,

Only darkness punctuated by stars, like shimmering souls,

Lost as he was looking in the wrong direction.

In an absence of God it is necessary

Not to invent Him. When it comes to devotion

To creation’s supreme-being, Man’s more likely

To indulge a preference for self-promotion.

From spear onto rocket, how far has man advanced?

Yet reason doesn’t allow deity to be lanced.

Dave Alton

Fall Almost

Summer’s sun thins to cloud and mist,

Sky-blue being washed out to grey,

Faces recently uplifted

Fade and pale and turn away.

Autumn colours quietly arrayed,

Gilded leaves shading to brown

Until gathering winter winds,

With cold fingers, pluck them down.

While she of four score years and ten,

Who’s the last of all she knew,

Accepts now her season has gone,

Feels she’s had more than her due.

There may still be sun yet to come,

But even so, days grow small,

Summer passes to memory,

Then will slip beyond recall.

Dave Alton

Auschwitz Visit (1)

Holocaust can be denied

And that denial

Tattooed

On the sole

Of each shoe

Tossed to the pile

Woven

Through prayer shawls

Stripped

From Rabbis’ shoulders

Wound

Around wire frame

Tangled wire frames

Of glasses

Clouded by gas

Plaited

Into ponytails

Shaved

From bowed heads

Cowed heads

Written

In indelible ink

On imperishable parchment

Hung

At cardinal points

From rolled wire

One word

NO!

All who guard fences

Deny themselves

And say

No

More

Auschwitz Visit 2 - Frescos

Impressed

Two laughing cherubs

Anoint each other

With cornucopias

Of

Immaculate water

Impressed

Aryan youths

Plunge

Through surging surf

On

Wild horse back

Impressed

Two cute kittens

Licking their own paws

To wash

Each other’s whiskers

Impressed

Beneath frescos

Untermensch

Had barking moments

For

Hollow handing

Cold

Unclean water

Over 

Wasted bodies

Over

Brutalist slop-stones

Dave Alton

The Garden

Gardener surveyed the whole garden,

Immaculate fabrication

In constant, flawless bloom. That pair

Tending to this creation

Went about their tasks tirelessly

And without fault. All perfect!

Never did a petal shrivel,

Nor a leaf shed. In fact

Nothing would, nothing could, ever change.

So it was for this reason

Gardener knew dissatisfaction.

Without season on season

What purpose for Gardener at all?

Those diligent underlings

Were mere ornaments without

Challenges only flux brings.

Vivid spring appears so urgent

After winter’s perishing term,

Summer is defined by the fall:

Gardener introduced the wyrm.

                                                                    Dave Alton