Geoff Stevens
Lettermullen
Imagine this as a place
where no one spoke until
the invention of the radio
and then their voices crackled
with an atmosphere of rainstorm
and the crashing of the wild wild sea
as they asked for bread and potatoes
or a cylinder of liquid gas
at the store that stood there isolated
on a black and white TV screen of time
before a stone-littered landscape
that front a bleak background of hills
and a canvas of oil-smeared skies
and was a screaming motorcycle ride
from civilisation, a windswept sodden walk away
from the white-walled cottages
with their peat-smoke twisting chimneys
and turf-top roofs of mildewed thatch.
Introduce a car or two and the odd hiker
and allow a few women into the pub
and satellite dishes would sprout from the eaves
but colour would still only exist indoors
travel through on wheels or on the yellow backs
of oilskinned walkers roughing it
through a landscape which is forever two-tone
the wind grey and sounding black
as it whistles through the rain
or settles white and silent on the horizon's distant waves.
where no one spoke until
the invention of the radio
and then their voices crackled
with an atmosphere of rainstorm
and the crashing of the wild wild sea
as they asked for bread and potatoes
or a cylinder of liquid gas
at the store that stood there isolated
on a black and white TV screen of time
before a stone-littered landscape
that front a bleak background of hills
and a canvas of oil-smeared skies
and was a screaming motorcycle ride
from civilisation, a windswept sodden walk away
from the white-walled cottages
with their peat-smoke twisting chimneys
and turf-top roofs of mildewed thatch.
Introduce a car or two and the odd hiker
and allow a few women into the pub
and satellite dishes would sprout from the eaves
but colour would still only exist indoors
travel through on wheels or on the yellow backs
of oilskinned walkers roughing it
through a landscape which is forever two-tone
the wind grey and sounding black
as it whistles through the rain
or settles white and silent on the horizon's distant waves.
Page(s) 16
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