Peter Branson
Heroes
‘The pony jerks and the riot’s on.’
(From ‘Clearances’: Seamus Heaney)
Tromping to Monsalhead and back with friends,
you pause near dank cold Demonsdale beneath
a fitful crowded sky, mapping your mood
where Devil’s Scabious turns green banks haze-blue
parade of Heroes, the Olympic dream
fulfilled: no lives at risk from those who fight
(Afghanistan, Iraq), or those who don’t,
no bones wrong – right; no loving sacrifice.
Take Heaney’s great-grandmother, off to Mass
in her new husband’s trap for the first time,
mobbed by the Orange gang she’d left behind.
Sense neighbourly outrage, well-hurled insult,
riding the Troubles straight through here and now,
white knuckled cobbles, blood across the page.
Peter Branson, a former Writer-in-residence for “All Write”, has been published by journals including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Fire, The Interpreter’s House, Red Ink and Other Poetry.
Page(s) 53
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The