Nursery Rhyme by Kevin Brewer

Ring-a-ring of funeral bells

Throw the pussies down the wells

Ninety people fell and drowned

When London bridge came falling down

.

Ba-ba black sheep’s locked outside

Now the farm’s gone apartheid

Today’s pressures just too much

Humpty Dumpty’s cracking up

.

Jack Horner rings the Sunday Times

Utters a few warning lines

Slams down receiver then he’s gone

Sticks in a thumb explodes a bomb

.

Sitting drinking ginger ale

Duke of York turns ghostly pale

Ten thousand men go up in smoke

Their ashes settle round his cloak

.

Mary Mary quite contrary

Jumps from the eleventh story

Meets the pavement face to face

But makes an impact on that place

.

Pavement artist then takes part

Makes Mary Mary objects d’art

Splattered stone stands in the Tate

With Mary Mary on a plate

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Sing a song of 50p

Mummy say one more to me

No more no more good night good night

God reaching down turns off the light.

.

.

By Kevin Brewer

Rain by Winifred Grace Turner

It rained last night, what a lovely sound,

With kisses so welcome, it softened the ground.

A raindrop sparkles on a leaf by my door

Iridescent and trembling waiting for more.

A spiders web shimmers, gossamer lace.

With fairy like fingers it caresses my face.

A snail leaves a trail as it moves slowly along

The rain freshened air fills with the birds lovely song.

The world is awakening, the sun will arise

Flame coloured banners will colour the skies,

New buds will open and flowers bloom again

Welcoming new life, brought by Gods blessing of rain.

.

.

By Winifred Grace Turner

Autumn Gold by William Hayles

Golden leaves beneath my feet,

Autumn winds through my hair,

Flowers fade in slow retreat,

Foxes sleeping in their lair.

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Ashen skies of nimbus flocks,

Shrieking geese flee from the east,

Falling showers of icy drops,

Soaking land, man and beasts.

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Short days fly from dawn to dusk,

Chill nights sheltered by crackling fire,

Cattle in byre, fed on husks,

Springs green pastures their desire.

.

Boughs of apples creak and groan,

Hazels hardening on the tree,

Fields of stubble, freshly mown,

Swallows gone beyond the seas.

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Orion’s sword arm held on high,

His flashing belt diamond bright,

The autumn stars invade the sky,

And silvery moon lights up the night.

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It’s chestnut roasting, marshmallow toasting,

Hot toddies and mulled ales downed,

In the hedgerow robins boasting,

Leafy carpet covers the ground.

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Autumn, herald for the winter,

All brown and red burnished gold,

Time is passing like a sprinter,

Now the year is growing old.

.

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By William Hayles

The Birthday Card by Frances Cummins

The shaking hand that traced the wiry letters

traced the future:

that caressed my hair when I was young

now grips my heart with grief.

And I am left to wonder –

Did you know too?

.

Hands more eloquent than words their joints gnarled

like old branches

their sinews stretched with time

tell the story of a life long-lived.

And I am left to wonder –

Do you know too?

.

The emptiness of future anniversaries

flashed before me;

Words of love, not for this day alone

but for all the days to come.

And I no longer wonder –

You do know too.

.

.

by Frances Cummins

(1992)

The Houses of the Valleys by Ann Hughes

Reaching out in unending lines

Houses of the valleys, all the same

In their uniform of dereliction and decay

Clinging on to the hillside, like old people

Clinging on to the old way of life.

.

Smoke rises from the chimneys

Catching the last fading sunlight

of the promising summer of plenty,

Falling soon to the sills in black sooty smuts

Where sometimes people sit and stare.

.

The empty streets echo in the silence

of tack boots on the cobblestones,

Black windows stare at me with accusation

Betrayal screams at you with her evidence

in the houses of the valleys.

.

.

By Ann Hughes (1992)

Healing by R. S. Thomas

Sick wards. The sailed beds

becalmed. The nurses tack

hither and fro. The chloroform

breeze rises and falls.

Hospitals are their own

weather. The temperatures

have no relation

to the world outside. The surgeons,

those cunning masters

of navigation, follow

their scalpels’ compass through

hurricanes of pain to a calm

harbour. Somewhere far down

in the patient’s darkness,

where faith died, like a graft

or a transplant prayer

get to work, repairing

the soul’s tissue, leading

the astonishing self between

twin pillars, where life’s angels

stand wielding their bright swords of flame.

.

.

by R. S. Thomas

from Mass for Hard Times

(1992)

Where Cars Cannot Come by Cyril Jones

Where cars cannot come

Is where I would go;

Away from the drum

Of their cyclic agenda

So you cannot remember

The vision you know.

.

I walk off the highways

And into the lanes;

To recall the memories

With wind my companion

With sun as my champion

To listen to all, of natures refrains.

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The rustle of long grass,

The wild whining trees,

A tune, on the edge of glass

Strikes the first chord,

A bloodthirsty sword.

To deep in the wood now, for any reprieve.

.

A flash of the sun

On the edge of the water,

Like the startling fun

Contained in her smile

And roasted by guile

I saw, Neptunes daughter.

.

I cannot go on now,

Where cars cannot come,

But I renew the vow

To do what is needed

And quietly unheeded

I take out the gun.

.

For of all that is troubling me

This now is the sum,

That a sound greater, considerably,

Reside in this lane

And nothing exists, to blot out it’s pain;

Where cars cannot come,

… Is my heart

… Is my brain.

.

.

By Cyril Jones

When the Mist Clears by Donna Menadue

A mass of clinging entrapment

graces the drifting storm

in a conspiracy of eeriness

on a cloudy day.

Frozen faces upturned to the waves;

voyagers threadbare

discussing ways and means;

bold an evil drifting on the tide,

It is rumoured in these parts

that gold-heavy galleons

vanish in the sun

when the mist clears.

.

.

By Donna Menadue

The Black Mountain by Donald Sainsbury

Scarped against the sky it rises it’s

Shadow bare of grass and gorse,

Barren are it’s granite ledges, worn

Fine through erosive force,

Shrouded in the firmament it’s peak

Lies cold and stark,

A tomb for scoria and fossils, from

An age that has left it’s mark.

Towering these weathering crags reign

Obscurely above the earth –

A lonely black mountain, sterile since

It’s birth.

.

.

By Donald Sainsbury

Life is it a Waste? By Wendy Tina Jones

Man’s life is like a cloud that fades and is gone,

Man dies and never returns,

Forgotten by all who knew him,

So he continually strives to make his mark whilst he is on this Earth,

So that he will be remembered in centuries to come,

Defaming people as he strives for success,

Foolishly gathering riches that he cannot take with him,

We were born as nothing,

And we will die as nothing.

.

By Wendy Tina Jones