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