Today I’m delighted to host a poem from John Gohorry, author of fourteen poetry collections and fellow member of Poetry-ID. This piece is from his latest book, A Coventry Crucible, co-written with John Lane. You can hear more of John’s work – and mine – at the online launch of the Poetry-ID anthology Beyond the Walls on Thursday 1 July at 7.30 pm. E-mail me at tim.e.taylor@talk21.com if you’d like to come along.
Buildings
(Remembering McAlpine, Gale, Higgs and Hill, 1961 -1969)
That summer, one labourer sang
We all lived in a yellow submarine
as concrete poured into the footings, hoists rose,
and a stage at a time one small part
of the blitzed centre became a department store.
From the third floor, across town, you could see
the spire of the new cathedral
and in the street below the décolleté of girls,
as Murphy said, All the way down to their breakfast.
Scarface and Lumpy were sent into sewers
to fetch out the rats but every Friday
the gangerman emptied the honeybucket
and my shovel burst into sweet song
as I mixed three and one, my paypacket
bulging with big notes a welcome burden.
Taking five for a smoke, Murphy said
You know Rome wasn’t built in a day, then added
That’s because they didn’t give us the contract,
a quip I came over many summers to learn
was a standard part of the craic, and shared
once myself, at McAlpine’s, with a young lad
on a brownfield site, just before losing time.
Love’s house, once loud with children, fills now
with reflective music. Calendars track dates
of their visits, of grandchildren’s birthdays,
where talk scaffolds what have long since become
the ripest of friendships, and laughter, late
into the night, sets the roof ringing.
They come and go in the great Metropolis
of Work, from which we are at last pensioned,
its schools, offices, cost centres, virtual
learning resources the flawed construction
of a failing plutocracy within which
amazingly, on the best days, discourse
is craic, and learning’s foundation is love.
Through all this, the labour of versing. The light push
of a thought opens the door everything is
onto space where, a course at a time, the word
building which is my observatory inches
its way upwards. Its walls echo with music,
philosophy, mirth, conversation of friends.
There’s time left. The building’s not finished.
John Gohorry
was born Donald Smith in Coventry in 1943 and lived there until going to UCL in 1961. Since 1970 he has lived in North Hertfordshire, where since retirement he has been Poet in Residence at David’s Bookshop, Letchworth Garden City. He still returns regularly to Coventry. So far he has published fourteen collections of poetry, details of which can be found on his website at www.johngohorry.co.uk
Together with his old friend John Lane he has compiled a collection of poems and prose pieces celebrating the continuing influence of Coventry on their lives and imaginations over the years. Their book, A Coventry Crucible, from which Buildings is taken, is a contribution to Coventry’s role as 2021 UK City of Culture.
A Coventry Crucible is published price £10.00 by Lapwing Publications, Belfast. You can buy copies for £8.00 (UK post free) direct from John Gohorry via his mobile – text or call 07900 645357 to sort details.
pic: Anselm Schüler 2020. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
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