The Poetry Kit |
| Keith Armstrong | |||
| WILLIAM
BLAKE IN THE BRIDGE HOTEL A few pints of Deuchars and my spirit is soaring. The child dances out of me, goes running down to the Tyne, while the little man in me wrestles with a lass and William Blake beams all his innocence in my glass. And the old experience sweats from a castle’s bricks as another local prophet takes a jump off the bridge. It’s the spirit of Pat Foley and the ancient brigade on the loose down the Quayside stairs in a futile search, just a step in the past, for one last revolutionary song. All the jars we have supped in the hope of a change; all the flirting and courting and chancing downstream; all the words in the air and the luck pissed away. It seems we oldies are running back screaming to the Bewick days, when a man could down a politicised quip and craft a civilised chat before he fed the birds in the Churchyard. The cultural ships are fair steaming in but it’s all stripped of meaning - the Councillors wade in the shallow end. O Blake! buy me a pint in the Bridge again, let it shiver with sunlight through all the stained windows, make my wit sparkle and my knees buckle. Set me free of this stifling age when the bland are back in charge. Let us grow our golden hair wild once more and roar like Tygers down Dog Leap Stairs. |
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