St. George’s flags: commons image
By S. J. Litherland
In the pit villages where abandoned corridors
run underground, where there is nothing to see
on Front Street except empty shops and closed halls
in valleys or on windswept hills or by the sea,
where nothing is happening over and over again,
another slate slides off a roof, and the pit heap
is no longer a worry, or those buckets tipping waste
on the coast, flags have appeared on lampposts,
the flags of the Union and of St George, the red,
white and blue, and the white and the red, flags
owned by the dispossessed and the forgotten,
who once carried banners, used to the heft and tug
in the wind, on Gala Day and on marches, in step
with the Lodge, they have lost the words to tell
of their distress, loss of their worlds in the village,
now like shells stripped clean on a beach, vacant
lots and bemusement, what can express a whole
community in mourning but the silence of the flags.
In pit villages, by the shut down library, they converse
like poets in symbols, the flag covers the hearse.
And when the flags are taken down, the silence
will still be heard on lampposts, waiting to be verse.
