NAPOMO: Norman Nicholson, Wall

One from an unjustly neglected poet from Millom, Cumbria, who was frequently pre-occupied with landscape and people and the places where they meet (for ill as well as good: he wrote a very powerful one about the Windscale fire).

Wall
( The wall walks the fell - Grey millipede on slow Stone hooves;  )

UA Fanthorpe: BC:AD

I thought about posting this on numerous occasions during the national poetry month, and didn't. However, UA Fanthorpe died today, and so I post this in memoriam. May she rest in peace and rise in glory. I heard her read, once.

U.A. Fanthorpe (*1929, †2009)

BC:AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.