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Living in 21st Century Yorkshire

 

Poetry Competition

 

The poetry competition was on the theme of  'Living in 21st Century Yorkshire.'

The winning poem was from Steve Ely (Wakefield) entitled 'Objective One.'

 

Objective One 

Through the mists of an April dawn
a crowd flowed along Manvers Way, so many,
I had not thought the dole had undone so many,
sending them herded from the fuming valleys
of Dearne and Dove and Don and Rother
into the bus bays and car parks of Ventura,
Tesco and Next PLC, where they pour
from coaches, minicabs and cabriolets,
lighting cigarettes, adjusting iPODs,
pressing mobiles to their ears, striding out
in polished patent, pinstripes breaking
on the buckled instep, tailored skirts
and long coats flaring on the breeze.

Sixty thousand work here, in distribution,
call-centres, light industry and retail,
along the roundabouted blacktop
ribboning from Birdwell to Barnsdale,
the EU funded M1 to A1 link road,
Objective One, bringing light to parochial darkness,
access, investment, enterprise, jobs;
until sterling collapses, Kolkata undercuts
and the market-zeitgeist lurches,
retrenching capital in gold and gilts
and the provincia flips once more
to wrecking-ball brownfield-bombsite,
the full monty of dole and dereliction,
where brassed-off, hand-to-mouth yokels
are abandoned to dearth and absurdity,
their eh-bah-gum tutu dreams.

Once there were woods and open fields,
fens in the flatland, villages on the hill.
Bullheads in the millstream, polecats
in the warren; red kite, raven, white-tailed eagle,
over the wolf-prowled heath.  Danelaw sokeland,
assarted from the wildwood, torp in the langthwaite clays;
the angelcynn muster at Ringstone Hill,
where three wapentakes meet; Oswald's manor
by the holy well - belltower, gatehouse,
carucates for geld. Here, beyond Whitwell
and the five boroughs, beyond Mercia's
clement mid-lands, we beat the bounds
at rogationtide from Bamburgh, Durham
and York; the dragon-prowed river, the waycross
on the roman road, hoar apple tree,
whit's Gospel Thorn, the tumulus on Askern Hill;
these are the roots that clutch, these the sprouting corpses,
these are the fragments, we shore up against our ruins.

by Steve Ely