Dream stone town
North or Scots
With all the standard frights
Of drivers’ fretful sleep
The cars that will not stop
No matter what the force of braking
That will not climb the hill
The parking
And the failure to recall
Precise location
We’ve lots of c’lebs
The locals tell me
That live round here
And football wives
I peer through squares of swirly glass
Down halls of terraced houses
In one there stands a tanned
Impassive and hard-bodied lady
With big black hair and glitter-shadow eyes
She stares ahead but sees me not
Through all the cluttered dark
Of vestibule and mullion
Across the street
A skinny blue-veined woman
Flashes wide her Russian furs
I find my coaching inn hotel
They seat me in their roast-beef room
All set about with dressers Welsh
And propped-up plates
The other guests legitimately booked
And me without a reservation
Like that stolen lunch
On that training day
When I lost my way
And stumbled into
The plates of food
In room Eleven A
This, I believe, is what they seek
When they fly out to Thailand
Though it’s hard to find in this leaden world
Be it ever so sunny and blue
Sick of the mud and the rain of old England
The Bounty’s men set sail for Tahiti
But even in the Southern Ocean
The spirit cannot move so gaily
As in my dream
With all its flitting weightless freedom
Christ came down to save us all
They say
From this leaden world
Blackthorn 