To the Artist's Page                   To our home page

To Gerald England's previous piece     To Gerald England's next piece

And Every Star Shall Shine

Why are your poems so full of country images?
It was the confessed citylovingliving girl who asked
I hadn't noticed
It was he who knew the countryside who answered
he whose thoughts roamed about the wild moors
lapped about the shores of a lake
became thick as forests
rose high as the birds
Yet he lives in a city
Sheffield's not a city she said
Not like London New York San Francisco
What's a city?
He thought of the wilder parts of Hampstead Heath
The Serpentine that serves well as any lake
the forest around Walthamstow and Epping
The birds sing over London too
He thought of the journey along Attercliffe Road
or up Brightside to the motorway
of traffic lights huge shops and factories
She thought of The Tate The British Museum
of supermarkets open until midnight
Then they looked up at the sky
in London there was a red dust glow
New York was worse
the stars were seen in a haze over Sheffield
but on Brackenhill Common
every star shone clear and bright.

To the top of this page