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Monday, 11 June 2012

Leeds, (it's just a poem).




Leeds


I don’t live in Leeds, I die there, slowly
Banished there by my peers, or shall I just
be kind and call it my fate.  Leeds left deep
scars in my psyche when their team beat mine in
the FA Cup:  (Leeds 3, Crystal Palace 1).
Then, when a girl from Leeds joined my school
I learned what bluntness meant; it stayed with me.

My energies drain now in its suburbs.
At night I dream of the Kingdom of Elmet,
the forest of Loidis, sheep producing
white woollen cloth, flaxen fields of yellow-grey.
Finishing mills, giving way to foundries,
iron and industry incarnating to
Leeds and its locals; Loiners, blunt of speech,
hard of eye.  My southern softness  seems so 
out of sync so I walk by the Aire,
look to the Atlantic, escape to the
Pennines, my heart just  longing  for Wales.


Cait O’Connor

4 comments:

  1. Cait, it's been far too long since I have left you a message. Please know that I have been visiting, quietly, treasuring beauty in your images and words, but feeling too pressed for time to thank you enough for your gifts.

    xo

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  2. Ah Cait. Although not Welsh, my heart longs for Wales too, all the way from Australia!- my husband was kind enough to surprise me with tickets to travel there with him again a while ago.
    I also often feel I belong among the rich ochre colours of Outback Australia and applied as a young woman to teach there, but was refused on the grounds it would not be safe.
    So like your Leeds, I sit here and wonder how a person ends up in a city they don't really want to be in - family, marriage and employment for me I guess. All important factors.
    I enjoyed your poem!

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  3. Always enjoy your poems, how bleak Leeds now seems to me.

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  4. Your poem brought back those early months when we first moved to Leeds, many years ago. After a while I grew to love the place and Yorkshire. Just in time for us to move south again!

    I`m so pleased to have found your blog. Enjoy being free of work and having the time and space to become who you really want to be.

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Thank you so much for taking time to comment.