The gull's voice this now can be heard

Mark Carr

the gull's voice this now can be heard
screeched through silenced shipbuilding
whilst somewhere over head drones
these now motors fettling their ways
across high to nowhere of importance.

no clatter of iron ‘n’ steel, no shipbuilding
over Wear there, over there it stands a
sad monolith silent grey shell not of sea
but some clam-clamour shell of history
holding silent echoes of rivet ‘n’ hammer.

both bridge ‘n’ building boast blue badge
a celebration of steel by man built up
and blown down, of building to the kill-
in fields where man falls to the beast
where profit and praise is gathered and
crowned through the blood ‘n’ sweat of
broken bodies too tired to be bothered. 

now regeneration calls: trees planted, 
roads driven, consumers given what 
they are told they need, but I see the 
real tree, there, it grows over there 
bending that grey box, breaking through,
telling truths, the tide will rise ‘n’ fall 
and man can only do one to follow.

The Science

This poem was written on the banks of the River Wear, in the North East of England. Sunderland was once a great industrial town, with shipbuilding at its heart. I was looking across the river at the grey industrial remains of the last shipyard to launch a ship. All around, the city council were ‘regenerating’ the old industrial site with new roads, paths and landscaping, including many trees. However, what struck me was not the human-made regeneration, but nature’s own. The old shipyard was bursting with trees, plants, grass and ‘weeds’, which were regenerating the area in their own slow, determined way. Scientifically, the poem considers what we, as a global society, understand as the regeneration of the landscape and whether intervention through ‘human-made regeneration’ is actually regeneration at all: the only true and natural regeneration can be nature’s own.

The Poet

Principally Mark is an artist. He has been making and exhibiting art in the UK and abroad since his teenage years, gaining a BA (hons) Fine Art in 1984, a PGCE in 1992, and a MA Fine Art in 1994. However, writing has always been a large part of his creative output, with poetry being a great calling in his life. He has travelled widely across Europe, North America, India and Australasia. He was born and educated in the North East of England where he now lives and works. Website: https://armchairanarchist.wixsite.com/mark-carr