POETRY VOICE-OVERS 1: ‘A SHORT HISTORY’

To mark the seventeenth anniversary of the launch of the website I have created a new category: POETRY VOICEOVERS. The first poem to be published on the site – almost seventeen years ago to the day – was ‘A SHORT HISTORY’, written more than forty years ago*. I am republishing it here with my voiceover.

A SHORT HISTORY

For a generation, like weather cocks,

their skeletons swung near the highway.

James Price and Thomas Brown had robbed the Mail.

Years turned. The Gowy flooded and the heath

flowered. Travellers noted the bones

hanging in chains by the Warrington road.

Justices ordered the gibbet removed,

the remains disposed of. In Price’s skull,

while Napoleon was crossing the Alps

or Telford building bridges or Hegel

defining Historical Necessity

or Goya painting Wellington’s portrait,

a robin made its nest.

Note: I would like to thank Sylvia Selzer for enabling me to create this new category.

*Re-published in 2013 in A JAR OF STICKLEBACKS.