The Wide-Open Moors and Fells

My photo of Cray Moor on the footpath between the village of Buckden and Semer Water - in the Yorkshire Dales National Park (northern England).

 

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This huge open space!
A place where the mind can vault, climb
And cast off its petty baggage.
I say: The more open, the better.
This is the claustrophobic's heaven.
The agoraphobic's hell.
On these moors “you feel free”.
Here you can breath easily.
Here you can be yourself 
Here you can simply be.

Look ahead… and farther ahead.
See those smooth rounded hills.
Those gentle curves jewelled with jagged rock.
The circling curlews above.
In the gaps, dead sheep rot
And life and death go on and on and on…

You cannot own the distance
Which lies in front of you.
All you can do is journey into it.
All you can do is become one -
At least for a meagre hour or two.
You want to stride within the expanse. 
To be at one.
Yes — you want it all.

Some folk call it bleak.
They want more trees and bright colours.
The questioning wide-open spaces 
Clash with their need for comfort. 
For human voices. For human noise.
They want a biscuit-tin scenery
Which looks after them
And which they can mentally own -
At least while they’re here.
But this is what it is.
Open.
And that’s the very point!
Don’t you understand that?

Sure; this landscape was man-sculpted too -
Or at least in part it was.
But that was then. 
And this is now.
Yes — this is right here. 
And right now.

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Paul Austin Murphy 2021

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Bradford’s Famous Mill, As Viewed From Ilkley Moor

 

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The mill towers famously on the distant hill.
Now seen in a wintery semi-pink sunrise
Of soft cloud and delicate rain.
The magnificent 249 feet of chimney
Wears its crown of clouds
With an assured transcendence.
It looks like a 19th-century ghost -
Furtively popping out of the clouds,
And then back in again.

Sure; Bradford isn’t usually this appealing.
Yet today it’s transformed by distance and cloud.
That keen separation creating an aesthetic charm
Which is often — or even always — missing.

So there the mill proudly stands.
A mill which once produced silk for the whole world.
Now perched like an stone eagle
On the very top of a Yorkshire hill. 
This church of industry.
This physical embodiment of Lister’s will.
His giant ego cast in stone.
This 19th-century monument -
Splendid on the Bradford horizon.

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© Paul Austin Murphy 2021

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Inside

 

The dark days of the inside -
Where movement and fresh air are rare.
Where the subject sinks into itself
And take its own navel as the world.
Where nothing takes the focus away 
From a self enamoured by itself.
Where its small-time sufferings
Are blown up into monuments.

Get out.
Open up.
Selffulness rarely comes out well.

How Old Was Einstein When He Was 54?

 

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Please tell me -
Exactly how old was Einstein when he was 54?
I simply don’t get it.
I can’t find out.
Yet I must find out -
Lest life won’t be worth living.
So no matter how much I sweat and cry,
I just can’t discover how old Einstein was when he was 54.

This is an equation I cannot solve.
My intuition simply isn’t up to this job.
If only I could inherit Cantor’s spirit
Then a solution to this evil conundrum 
Would be in the offing.

This has kept me awake night after night
As I tossed equations around my mind
Until sick of bleeding numbers
And the whole mathematical show.
This is such a sticky nut to crack -
Like proving Goldbach’s conjecture 
Or writing my very own Theory of Everything 
On a hipster’s t-shirt.

Yet I will crack it.
I’m sure to crack it.
I’ll win that hollowed prize.
Then I’ll go down in mathematical history
As the very-sad madman 
Who spent his entire sorry life
Attempting to find out how old Einstein was when he was 54.

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© Paul Austin Murphy 2021

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

The Ancient Cow and Calf Rocks

 

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Thanks to curious feelings 
(Which touched the Earth’s own personal history)
The mind broke loose
To venture into the epic wilds
Of Carboniferous history.

But firstly: a sharp blast from the modern age -
A mass of carved names
Deeply scared into sandy flesh.
Many from the birth pangs 
Of the long, bloody last century. 
Take ‘Jack, 1902’ — just a brief whisper 
From one man’s very own, 
Very special, 1902 day.

A smoothly-moving glazier 
(In an Ice Age dream) 
Brought these rocks down 
In downpour upon downpour 
Of falling rock.
The Earth’s rock-bones 
Now run deeper, farther 
(In that yielding ground) 
Than the roots of any oak.
And that drawn out, solid spine, 
Runs straight across fields,
Up the rocky fells
And over crowning moors, 
Then down to kindred valleys.

With these unspoken links, 
The rocks bind us to the long gone, 
And to the long dead.

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© Paul Austin Murphy 2021

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

The Electric Heart of the City

My photo of a power station in Leeds.

 

That latent power.
A generator of light and life.
Everything is wired up
And ready to spark the city beyond.
And all born of heap upon heap
Of dead, ossified animal.

This waiting latent power
Is built into symmetries at all levels
In an orgy of functionality.
Everything in its right place.
The bound veins carry power
From generator to generator.
Conduits for electrons — an infinity of them.
They pulsate, throb.
Seethe with energy.
Electrons moving like lightning… are lightning.
The warning sign says “Danger!” -
But does not need to.
Touch something. Touch something. And see.

This is why you have a TV.
This is why you can see at midnight.
This is why you feel warm in winter.
This is why you have so much of what you have.
This is the heart that pumped the power
The city and its people needed.
This is the beating heart
Of your electrified city.
The source of so much power.
So much light.
So much life.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Inner-City Gothic

I took this photo just outside Leeds city centre.

 

Between city and nature
Is this kinda gothic place.
Here the sagging trees
Have little room to breath.
They gasp between concrete blocks.
All is graffiti-laden
And stinks of piss.
A dungeonlike mini-world
Of threat and mystery…
Well; at night it sure is.
But during the day,
It simply hints at death.

That enticing staircase beyond
- Sharp in its upwardness — 
Goes to a lighter place.
And the darkly-blotched tunnel -
A piss-ridden conduit to nowhere,
And a rapist’s neat-little trap.
By day, too short to be a danger.
By night, too long to be used at all.
(One wonders what its purpose was.)
And those monumental pipes 
 — Which thread like iron veins
Between wall and wall -
Carry water, piss and shit
From A to B.

So which zeros signed ornate names
On this dirty patch of city?
Were they marking territory?
Expressing teen spirit?
Or in artistic competition
With rival graffitists?
Were there any prizes?
Perhaps the Master, Banksy,
Could judge them lightly
- In his hipsterish way -
From his artistic height…

Oh — the Council doesn’t care much.
It expects this colourful stuff.
Takes it for granted.
Yes — it’s inner-city expression…
And all that.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]