Crossing the Pennines, rocky spine
Of the country running North South,
Following the motorway west
From the Humber Estuary Mouth
It always felt cloud bound whatever
The weather or the time of day
Stretching out on either side of
England’s highest motorway.
Saddleworth Moor, place of ill fame
It looks desolate and bare and bleak
And I felt uneasy as I criss crossed it
Each Monday every single week .
It’s a place of pain and torture
Murder, loss and despair
The victims being young children ,
Callously buried out there .
Their graves unmarked
On that unforgiving ground
At least one poor boy
Was never ever found.
The perpetrators taunted parents
By just refusing to tell,
Each enjoying their notoriety from
The safety of their prison cell.
Every Monday as I crossed it
I swear I felt pain and grief
And having crossed on return
Swear I felt a sense of relief.
That already dark bleak place
Earned a such a sinister fame.
Saddleworth Moor entered history
As a sinister and haunted name.
In memory as I crossed over,
And I know this can’t be right,
But it never ever seemed
To be bathed in sunlight.
There is no blame or shame
in sometimes not being the same.
Woes will oft times call our name
even if we live a life without blame.
The secret is to play the game
whilst our hearts we tame
giving the finger to the dame
of misfortune who is in the frame.
Revoking things of ill fame
bad things we set aflame
and their sins we disclaim.
It is all about playing the game.
So come forward without shame
you are who you are, so your life reclaim
and at the end of the day proclaim
to all, I am me without any blame.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.