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Gateshead Music
GATESHEAD MUSIC
Not a storybook place of rhymes and chimes of bells
My childhood England was dark and dirty,
And instead of the skirl of bagpipes or the weeping fiddle,
There were factory sirens
And clashing steel loads on trucks to the docks.
Caught between black coal and brown ale,
I searched the streets for music and found nothing.
One day I never returned -
And note by note forgot their tuneless heritage,
Now in the silent moments of creeping age and grown children,
The steep pitch of streets down at the waters of Tyne
Draws my mind and probes the waves
Where the sound of coal dust still echoes -
And always will.
And I hear again the empty places, dark places, the places singing
My name in dialect I have long abandoned.
Somehow their music is not off-key;
And my inner melody
Seems to merge into that blackened score.
I hear its siren song and cannot shake free
Its bass notes from the balladry of my life.
Copyright ©
Sidney Beck
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