Free Collected Poems by Alan; Sillitoe

battlefield on fire,
    And cloud like a grey cloak was pulled along
    By some heart-broken mourner going home.

NORTH STAR ROCKET
    At the North Pole everywhere is south.
    Turn where you will
    Polaris in eternal zenith
    Studs the world’s roof.
    Under that ceiling
    A grey rocket crosses
    A continent of ice,
    Evading Earth by flirting with it.
    Who will know what planet he escaped from?
    A cone of cosmic ash pursued its course
    On automatic pilot set to earth
    Bringing Death – or a new direction
    To be fed into my brain
    Before collision.

FIFTH AVENUE
    A man plays bagpipes on Fifth Avenue.
    Gaelic-wail stabbing at passersby
    Who wish its pliant beckoning
    Would draw them through their fence of discontent
    To a field of freedom they can die in.
    They stand, and then walk on.
    A man with thick grey beard
    Goes wild between traffic,
    Arms wagging semaphore;
    Raves warnings clear and loud
    To those ignoring him.
    A blind man rattles a money-can,
    Dog flat between his legs
    Listens to the demanding
    Tin that has so little in
    Both ears register
    Each bit that falls.
    An ambulance on a corner:
    They put a man on a stretcher
    Who wants air. A woman says:
    â€˜Is it a heart-attack?
    Is the poor guy dead?’
    She worries for him:
    Dying is important when it comes.
    â€˜I suppose it is,’ I guess,
    â€˜I hope it’s not too late’ –
    She had one last year:
    â€˜Fell in the street, just like that.’
    Her lips move with fear.
    The man is slid into the van.
    Just like that.
    Hard to come and harder go
    For the bagpipe player in the snow
    The wild man with his traffic sport
    The old man with his dog
    And the young who hurry:
    Dying, a lot of it goes on.

THE LADY OF BAPAUME
    There was a lady of Bapaume
    Whose eyes were colourless and dead –
    Until the falling sun turned red;
    Her lovers from across the foam
    Walked at dawn towards her bed:
    Fell in fields and sunken lanes
    Died in chalk-dust far from home.
    A rash of scattered poppy-stains:
    Nowadays they pass her wide –
    That mistress of chevaux-de-frise
    Is still alive and can’t conceal
    Her mournful and erotic zeal:
    The lady of Bapaume had charms –
    Bosom large, but minus arms.
    No soldiers rise these days and go
    Towards the bloodshot indigo.
    Motorways veer by the place
    On which, with neither love nor grace,
    They drive to holidays in Spain.
    There was a lady of Bapaume
    Whose lovers ate the wind and rain.

STONES IN PICARDY
    Names fade,
    Suave air of Picardy erodes
    The regimental badge
    Or cross
    Or David’s Star
    Of gunner this and private that.
    The chosen captains and their bombardiers
    And those known but as nothing unto God
    Who brought them out of slime and clay
    Are taken back again.
    God knew each before they knew themselves
    If ever they did
    Before mothers lips sang
    Brothers showed
    Sisters taught
    Fathers put them out to school or work.
    But only God may know them when the stones are gone
    If any can –
    If God remembers what God once had done.

AUGUST
    Birth, the first attack, begins at dawn.
    It’s also the last, whistle at sky-fall,
    Illogical, unsynchronized, inept.
    Children, pushed over the top
    And kettledrummed across churned furrows
    Kitted out with dreams and instinct,
    Hope to learn before reaching the horizon.
    Those in front call back advice:
    â€˜Going to advance, send reinforcements.’
    But who trust the old, when they as young
    Spurned cautionary wisdom
    That never harmonized with youth?
    â€˜Going to a dance, send three-and-fourpence.’
    Some fall quietly under each rabid burst of shell
    Love of life unnoticed
    In willingness to give it
    Or the feckless letting-go.
    Leaves drop in the zero-hour of spring
    Young heat mangled by car or motorbike.
    Broken sight looks in, no view beyond
    Though terror rocks the heart to sleep
    The signal-sky gives bad advice:
    Get up, look outside, day again.
    Insight warped by energy, blinded by ignorance.
    The battlefield too wide,
    Bullets