‘Was it for nothing that the little room,
All golden in the lamplight, thrilled with golden
Laughter from hearts of friends that summer night?’ (Wilfrid Gibson)
I’m as happy as a daffodil
this day;
sunshine flows around me
over fences,
leaping
with the joy of my poetry.
I am Lord Pretty Field,
a tipsy aristocrat of verse,
become full of myself
and country booze
in the Beauchamp Arms.
Under branches frothy with blossom,
I carry a torch from Northumberland
for Wilfrid Gibson
and his old mates;
for Geraldine
I bear
my Cheviot heart
in Gloucester ciderlight.
We can only catch
a petal from the slaughter,
a bloom
to ease the melancholy
of a Dymock dusk;
hear laughter
over the gloomy murmurs
of distant wars.
A swirling rook cries out
across St Mary’s spire
in dialect
as I climb
back to my White House room
to dream of an England gone,
and a flash of whisky
with Abercrombie.
For Wilfrid you are still
‘a singing star’,
drenched in balladry;
and this I know:
I will keep your little songs alive
in this Golden Room in my heart
and, in my Hexham’s market place,
rant for you
and cover
all our love
with streaming daffodils.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
Gloucestershire 2003
Tyneside writer Dr Keith Armstrong was Year of the Artist 2000 poet in residence at Hexham Races.
Other commissioned work by Keith includes ‘Fire & Brimstone’ the story of Tynedale artist John Martin, and ‘The Hexham Celebration’, both for the Hexham Abbey Festival, and The Hexham Riot (publication and outdoor performance).
He also has also compiled and edited a local history book ‘The Town of Old Hexham’ and organised a mini-festival celebrating the life and work of Hexham born poet Wilfrid Gibson in 2003. He appeared again at the Hexham Abbey Festival in 2008 reciting the poetry of Gibson.
His poetry book ‘The Darkness Seeping’, based on the Prior Leschman Chantry Chapel in Hexham Abbey, was published in 1997.
