Here you will find the Poem Tyne Dock of poet Francis Scarfe
The summer season at Tyne Dock Hoisted my boyhood in a crane Above the shaggy mining town, Above the slaghills and the rocks, Above the middens in backlanes And wooden hen-huts falling down. Vermilion grass grew in the street Where the blind pit-ponies pranced And poppies screamed by butchers' stalls Where bulls kicked sparks with dying feet, And in the naked larks I sensed A cruel god beneath it all. Over the pit-head wheel the moon Was clean as a girl's face in school; I envied the remote old man Who lived there, happy and alone, While in the kitchen the mad spool Unwound as Annie's treadle ran. The boyish season is still there For clapping hands and leaping feet Across the slagheaps and the dunes; And still it breaks into my care, Though I will never find the street, Nor catch the old, impulsive tune, Nor ever lose that child's despair.
