South Crofty Revived by Bert Biscoe

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Ah! We’ll sit beside the aching Bal

To hold our heart between its knees –

Still hands, uncalloused now

Stir melancholy’s slow reprise –

It suits the eye to always choose

To stare at slowly moving ground

Beneath soft sandalled shuffled soles

Where nail’d steps once rang their sound,

And, pressed beneath the spirit,

Prone as mermaids conjured, to weep!

It suits despondent pity to bless

The labours passed of they who sleep –

It is for plough-wrought brow

And tremulous mournful voices

To ignore the sounds of Crofty now

A-brim with modern ‘total’ noises –

Knockers speak tomorrow’s tongue

Of element and indium, conductor tin,

Of sun and rain, all weather reversed,

And young the ancient to again begin –

Too soon by far to lament the end

And wise the Cap’n who shines his shoe,

Who takes the call to once more descend

As lode and price come right to hue –

Wheels turn and rock gives up its ore,

What is lost will find itself the prize

As fortune seeks to reward good hope

And damn the fool for self-deceiving lies.

 

 

(Photo Steve Tanner)

Vyager gans Geryow (Bert Biscoe) lives in Truro. He is a poet and songwriter whose work draws on his interest in history, politics, social justice and language. He represents the people of Boscawen Division on Cornwall Council. The Division was formerly called ‘Moresk’ – an unbroken link from civic administration to the hurried escape of Tristan and Iseult from the vengeful wrath of King Mark – Bert tries to invest Cornish values into the demand of modern life. His work is fun, and best read aloud – which he does whenever the opportunity arises, especially with fellow Cornish poet, Pol Hodge. ‘Living in Trurra’ he says. ‘Means that there is a constancy of running water beneath your feet – there are two clocks which ring the hours dissonantly and out of step – a good environment for poems to flourish in the cracks and shadows. Nowadays, the mullet listen attentively in the lee of the Old Bridge’.

 

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Vyager gans Geryow (Bert Biscoe) lives in Truro. He is a poet and songwriter whose work draws on his interests in history, politics, social justice and language. He represents the people of Boscawen Division on Cornwall Council. The Division was formerly called ‘Moresk’ – an unbroken link from civic administration to the hurried escape of Tristan and Iseult from the vengeful wrath of King Mark – Bert tries to invest Cornish values into the demand of modern life. His work is fun, and best read aloud – which he does whenever the opportunity arises, especially with fellow Cornish poet, Pol Hodge. ‘Living in Trurra’ he says ‘means that there is a constancy of running water beneath your feet – there are two clocks which ring the hours dissonantly and out of step – a good environment for poems to flourish in the cracks and shadows. Nowadays, the mullet listen attentively in the lee of the Old Bridge’.

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