Newcastle – Borderless

Poetry by Stuart McFarlane

River Tyne at Newcastle. From Public Domain

                       I                         
 
The Tyne is still, the water's calm,
a restful, reassuring balm.
In Newcastle our train has stopped.
From here it seems the perfect spot.
Where the iconic bridges span,
where, once, a different river ran;
well, different water, anyway,
flowing on into yesterday.
An errant cloud floats in the sky,
as if it's only passing by.
Nimble fingers unpick its seams;
on water sunlight softly gleams.
Transporting good to buy and sell;
the stories this river could tell!
Riverside harbours, wharfs and docks,
today replaced by concrete blocks.
Where there was muck once there was brass;
now buildings of shimmering glass,
high-tech hubs, computer centres;
the past flees; the future enters.
Newcastle, grimy, built on coal;
Have you now sold your northern soul?
Those hardy people of the past?
How long will their memory last?
 
                       II
 
Will the march of modernism harm
that fabled humour, Geordie charm?
Will your essential being change,
or will it just remain the same?
We're too busy with our smartphones
to dwell on our ancestors' bones.
To get on YouTube; that's our goal;
we are not used to heaving coal.
Those people, they belong to then;
yet the people now come from them.
Through generations runs a thread;
They are by shared history wed.
Yet, perhaps, they who once were here,
who, too, enjoyed a pint of beer,
are still with us; at least in thought,
their lives unfinished; dreams still sought.
Will our hopes, too, be unfulfilled,
our vision struck, our voices stilled?
We share with them. husband and wife,
the fickle randomness of life.
Now the train jolts into motion
and dispels my idle notions.
One final glance, one final time.
The Tyne is still; and still the Tyne.

Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.

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Poetry by Asad Latif

TARINI As the Intercity takes a bend a six-year-old runs to a carriage's end. Sixty-five years have left me here. "Where are you going?" she asks. "Oldcastle," I say. "On this Newcastle train?" She laughs her way back to the front. Ballerina of a swaying stage, two minutes later she's fetched a colouring book with parrots and trees waiting to be painted in all the hues known to light or shade before this evening is finally dead. "How old are you?" she demands. "Guess." "Eleven." "Yes." Infant balladeer of my laughing age, let's get serious. Your name carries mortals across the rivers of life and rage. Here and now Sing, sing and sing of the seasons winging their way back in to me on a long Australian evening that abhors any thought of summer dying. A station approaches. "Sweetie, come," her mother calls. Oh no Tarini. Don't go away. Can't you stay to send me on my way? I wish you'd see, the traveller receding in me. When this train comes to rest won't your eyes lift my feet from platform to concourse and then to the street overhead? Won't you see my breath never break its promise to my knees to rise in respect to the nearness of the new? Won't you see an old man bowing to the storm in you? Tarini stay or return. Tarini shape my passing into form.