1. Stone
Up on the moors a marker stands,
A point of reference for a past,
Its millstone blocks are still edged sharp.
The past is gone, the past remains.
Its plaque is stamped with cold relief,
Released from duties and from loss,
It stands apart from choices made,
From compromise, from harsh mistakes.
Beyond the ridge the village slips
Into a valley, blind and bleak,
Still full of life chipped from the stone:
The stories new, the stories worn.
The world is circling round these rocks:
Forgotten cairn which marks our loss.
2. White
The milk and mortar ends of time,
The cotton sheets and cobbled streets –
Which shine beneath the western skies –
And clouds which hide the hills from sight.
The Mesolithic depths of life
Are dragged from earth like dock-leaf roots.
They glimmer, broken tooth and jaw,
The glaucous grin of history’s scar.
The markless drifts will melt the walls,
The lambs will slow and watch the gulls,
The frost will dust the shadow’s track.
A tarnished memory turns its back.
The bread and fish, the starch and lead,
The white forgotten light of fate.
3. Gold Standard
The towns and villages were choked,
With lines of sunken eyes and hopes.
The basic decency of folk:
Together bound, together broke.
They gathered round to try again,
Rebuilding shattered lives of men.
Where wealth was measured out in graves:
A balancing of lost and saved.
The mills were emptied of the souls,
As soulless mechanisms rolled,
Across the disregarded world:
They snuffed out hopes and hoarded gold.
The rich can claim no small success,
As lives are crushed for their excess.
4. Freedom
Where golden plover rest in flocks,
The sun will set and ages pass,
And forests grow and fall and rot.
Each spring the plover find their nests.
Where tewits tumble through the clouds,
Our lives are measured out in earth,
In hopes and prayers, in bitter joys.
The tewits call the start of spring.
Where curlew mourn the rising sun,
We cut our links and try to run,
We buy the land and think it ours.
The curlew drift on wings of song,
The moor has drawn us here to see:
For those who don’t, the birds can be.
5. Debt Burden
You sought it in the word of god,
You sought it in the human heart,
You sought it round the noble fire,
You sought it, then you let it die.
You sought it in the free exchange,
You sought it in the chains of gold,
You sought it in the price of time,
You sought it, then you let it die.
You sought it in the bought and sold,
You sought it for the highest price,
You sought it at the highest cost,
You sought it, then you let it die.
You lost your hope and lost your way.
You built up debts you could not pay.
6. Traces and Tracks
The landscape stretches out of time,
Beyond the solid to the sun:
The setting, bloodied, monstrous sun.
The moors are full of spirits lost.
We crucify our histories here,
We break the links and travel on:
Erase the mysteries of our age,
Betray the ones who need us most.
The empty tombs and hollow shrines –
Where rites of truth and pure belief
Were once the center of the world –
Are crumbling and forgotten stones.
Across the moors are hidden tracks
Where spirits weep on cotton grass.
7. Handcart
The madness of the century churned,
Within, without, with demagogues,
With splits and deaths and compromise,
The wheels ran smooth and fires were stoked.
And fear had spurred the horses hard,
And land deals turned and history spurned.
The rich could cheat the grave once more,
And pour their assets overseas.
The shattered bones and broken homes,
And promises to workers burned,
In chapel halls and Liberal clubs,
Where speeches drifted cheap as smoke.
The mad, the rich, the charlatans:
Their cart rode past and you hitched on.
8. The Speech of Moors
The ancient language of the hills,
Hides questions in the tussock grass.
So close to earth, they feed its roots.
So close to sky,they shake the seeds.
Your scattered ash returns the words,
As old as rock and lost to time:
The dialect of moorland farms,
Forgotten lanes and trackless moss.
Up here your lives can ebb away:
A cairn, a plaque, a hiding place.
In snows the sheep will huddle round,
So far from everything you were.
And this is where the questions start,
It’s where they end, it’s where we part.
Dedicated to the people who always carry the greatest weight, and who always suffer the most in times like these.
Gavin R Jones 