The Friday Poem on 28/07/23
‘Snowday’ by Ian Harker is our Friday Poem this week. It’s an End of Times poem, but one which chooses to see beauty rather than horror, and one located specifically in Leeds. We love Harker’s careful phrasing, and his use of the particular, the historical, and the faintly absurd – Shih Tzus?! He controls the tone beautifully as the poem builds from the soft sweep of cars sliding on snow to a strangely reassuring apocalyptic finale. ‘Snowday’ delivers a gentle but serious warning with style and panache.
Snowday
The cars are falling with long sighs
down Monk Bridge Road, their tanks empty
and the beck grinding to a halt
beneath the tarmac. This is how it ends:
cars slide to a stop in snow that wasn’t forecast
or if it was, it wasn’t supposed to stick,
vehicle skids into vehicle, voices on speaker
slur with the cold, and Mr Matharu
from the newsagent’s watches in astonishment
and so do the monks of Kirkstall Abbey
come to collect their rent
and so does a unit of Roman infantry
that is hopelessly lost
and shouting in Dog Latin
at the woman with the Shih Tzus.
This is how it ends: you are being held
splendidly aloft by roots twice the size
of the branches, you are changing the colour
of the sunset and the smell of the breeze
while the trees, arm in arm,
take the weight of it all and there is beauty
in the sliding, skittering cars
and there is beauty in the warning lights
but most of all there is beauty in how you fall.
