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Hull at Beverley Gate
Kings town!
A causeway cavalcade to his Kings town;
no ribbon royal 'Hvl favour',
train-bandes make ready: take down.
Beverley Gate!
Rainy April morrow at the Beverley Gate;
Hotham shut his town vpon Hvl,
and poor Charlie outside he did wait.
Earthen pug!
At cortege feet muddy embankment was dug;
was Vermeer's famed view of Delft,
and all Hvl behind brick bastion was snug.
Vpon Hvl!
Nigh besieged with 'gog' and ordnance full;
reputative birth place of the Civil War,
save us all from hell and from Hvl.
Skirmishing!
Soon cut was the Hvmberside dyking;
purpose to flood the Holderness fields,
and mills did torch in the fighting.
Tempest rise!
Scoutmaster: the dread captain of spies;
decamped at the north ferry he be,
set hvlling 'deepers' alarum to rise.
Helmdeep!
Demagogue conspirators scrive 'Hvlhelmdeep';
the deep-ones and clubmen intown'd,
tilt enemy within for Hvl to safe keep.
Cimmerian sky!
Council of defence, neath the darkening English sky;
the bill did read at Parliament Street,
this Hvl water-poet now here must die.
Beverley Gate!
High-battled Round Heads mandate to attaint;
Hotham of White Heart nothing could do,
the water-poet hung from Beverley Gate.
New begin!
jmB - January 1999.
The black-fellow: a Hull love-cause legend,
a Sierra Leone exhibiter to meet did send,
to visit Hull's Wilberforce: the great Emancipator,
the black-boy must announce it all later.
The Kingston Ensign: a Hull exhibition designate,
the scramble of black-ivory to correlate.
Englished here is many a journal land-damned,
a starting-hole for those once kingdomed.
Hull: the land-of-green-ginger,
in this place against will to linger.
A pointing-stock; no pew-fellow to this city,
but behoveful interview so necessary.
No ordinary-colour does he wish to be,
but black-boy chisel in chains did he.
From this voiding-lobbey soon he goes,
before being shackled in horrid bilboes.
The black-boy; thought-sick and near homespun,
this choice-drawn alms-deed did leave undone.
The museum gain-given, he laboured past-proportion,
but promised return to complete did lie-upon.
to Marco
jmB - February 1999.
Hiding hence within the Town Docks Museum;
all other visitors left and I not with'em.
The warden incharge did belong to the parks,
and he slept all day along with the sharks.
For twenty-one hours I'd be locked within,
until Monday morning when it opened again.
You may think this all a little dull perhaps,
and the dead in here quite harmless;
but watery light pours through sully windows,
and skulk'd exhibits, can be reborn in shadows.
In the glimmer of torchlight skinless bones can move,
and ensteep'd monsters do this delusion prove.
Out of concealment lead foot to staircase,
thence up to company Court Room grandiose.
Studying the dull displays of this lumberroom,
I sighted the dread lance harpoon;
around about hull the fish-god with trident,
these antic sea-creatures snook defiant;
water-poets who be-rime and depict,
the antediluvian deepers to sea-room inship'd.
Deeping full ship from Hull Greenland Yards,
hunt wood to blackskin they haul halyards.
Chasing the great whale for to snare,
and frighting the frost'd polar bear.
Those death-practis'd, indrench'd deepers,
who mammock; tear them all to pieces.
Arctic beset did not tumble home to Hull Fair,
no call of fall set scrimshandering in despair.
Winter'd in the ice-pack the sawing docks did shrink,
nip'd in straits like sounded whale did sink.
Divine grace under pressure sent deeping into the oceans,
and settled deepers end to live as Neptune's sons.
On that Monday morning I left as I came,
not wanting to go in that place again.
But soon enough a walk around outside,
left a wish once more to go in and hide.
Of this monument Pevsner was wrong and Wray was right,
a hundred pounds can make a wonderful sight.
jmB - March 1999.
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