By Jeff Young
Rain on gravestones, trace memory of funeral ~ cast iron church like an etching, last light in winter.
Church doorway ~ theatre of ghost images, memories of prayers drift in light-blur.
Dilapidated ship, wrecked on St Domingo, ghost ship haunted, stone galleon. Everton Library, Shelmerdine’s dream.
Cornflower, sapphire blue, petals for tired eyes, John Clare’s ‘blue caps in the wheat’, hurtsickle, gogglebuster…
Memories in stone, pages of books, listen and you can hear pages turning, Blyton and Bronte, words in dust, sunbeam through broken window.
We used to pass below this concrete citadel and the buildings looked formidable; tenements and high-rises loomed over us…
Winter-broken sky, cutting like a guillotine, ice falling into the river. Memory of holding an icicle in my hand until it entered my body.
Chamomile, food for shark moth, sacred herb, folk medicine for aching head, remover of curses…
Spring brings new weather, in from the bay. Watch the light changing – the hill like a theatre. Watching the sunset, pale stars.
Vast perimeter walls, blocks of flats named for some reason after great Italian statesmen – Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi…
Tower blocks stood like desolate ships in a sea of barren topsoil and weeds. Over your cities grass will grow. The hill swallowed up places, memories and lives…
Cluster of spider eggs, cracked gravestone, the visible world receding as night falls.
Cowslip, herb of St Peter, keys of heaven, palsy cure, preserve against madness, ‘cowslip ball, tell me true, who shall I be married to..?
On the canal, low hum of industrial machinery. Grinder, drill, stacker truck reversing.
Spring light on the cut ~ rippled mirror, old warehouse reflection, echo of train over the bridge: rumour of kingfisher.
Dandelion, golden ray, schoolboy’s clock, barometer and sign of rain, liver cleanser, moth gold…
Beside the canal I found two bodies – the first was a wren in a bower of autumn leaves, the other a shrew, a tiny cat-gnawed ghost.
More than 120,000 people lived in these streets, forced to move out to new towns, to Skelmersdale, Kirkby and Speke, the 1960’s dream…
Canal’s dark waters – memory of dipping fishing net into the cut, scooping out sticklebacks, tiddlers, small fish in my hands.
Red campion, Red Riding Hood, nectar flower, snakebite cure, flower of Saint James, May Day flower…
On the gates of the canal lock, a stone’s throw from the tobacco factory, a storm-battered cormorant hangs its wings out to dry.
Ragwort, old man, folk medicine for staggered horse, aphrodisiac, Stinking Billy, staggerwort and stammerweed…
I go to the Everton water tower and look at its demonic ghost-face peering over the rooftops. Once it was a reservoir, now it stands empty.
The water tower used to see everything. It was a witness. Now it looks lonely amongst semi-detached houses. It looks blind.
Yarrow, wound healer, holy herb, soldiers woundwort, supernatural plant of midsummer, bridal bouquet, bloodwort…
A vision of shipwrecks in grey waters, edge of the city falling – wind turbines out in Liverpool Bay like weather machines winding up the sky.
The weather is memory and memory is weather. It seeps into this place, becomes layered into it. The meteorology of memory.
North star hanging over head, pale stars wired to the church tower, threaded with darning needles onto the darkness.
In the night a grief-choir in the church shadow, the mournful hymns of widows whose voices broke our frozen hearts. Atmosphere of ghosts.
‘Cowslip ball, tell me true, who shall I be married to…?’ Hymn books and library books, pages turning, hush the hill is sleeping…
