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They were like -- (fists raised)
'Like what? Go on, then, like what?'
Like something this child could dance to
with such a rhythm,
the words don't matter yet,
it's the speech-flow
full-guttering from the back of the throat like
Like what?
Irish, Norse, Scots and burred
Northumbrian, stirred into a dancing reel
rising and falling and rising --
so harshly tender, luvver --
before the passion's flattened right out of it down south
Howaay, man, hoy the bal ower heor!
or 'The spuggies are fledged' *
And in the early years it was said
If you are going to talk like that
you can go to the school up the road
(A flat tone is generally best
for menace and threat, with no warm scurries
and hullabaloo of anything like feeling.)
Even then, not always
so canny toon, Geordie
for all the whisper-quiet yellow trolleys
addressed to Two Ball Lonnen,
and before them
the climbing trellised roses of scenty Moorside,
the Great North Road trams, rattling and roofless to sky
Gissaride-onyer-bike-kidda?
Eee-lissen-him--gerr'im! Gerr'it-off-'im-Billy!
I saw a window with a hole
splattered like black mud --
Ah-seen'im-hoy-it-Mam!
and my stomach melting
down my strengthless tiny legs
Eee-ya-dortypig-smash'is-fyess!
Howaay-let's-do'im!
What tales can you tell, canny bairn?
The first ones, always
in the right language.
And more than a thousand books later I was watching
moving pictures of a grey river still holy to me,
and those lovely garths and wynds climbing ancient from
the Side of the town
with, above, the Tyne Bridge's sea-green coathanger
and my grandfather's stone towers bulking at each end
That's two per County, like
and the screen's arguing families fell out of focus --
all I could hear through the broken black hole was
Like what? Go on, then, like what?
Like words do when they dance,
like the rhythms that undo
the bindings of the heart,
so close to the border
it's easy to forget they were once my own
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