Plinth

Yes, I remember Grantham—
The name and the association—
Because one day in the autumn
Of a year, my train connected.

Shunted on some railway triangle
This way, that way, forwards and back,
Till I ran across bridges to travel
North away from Thatcher’s England.

It was flat country, far from the hills
Of home, a land of enterprise and hollow
Promises for those left in the rubble
Where industry once had been.

Then it was green and English,
Ragwort on the verges among the points
Birds calling, drowned by diesels
On the main line, my only way out.

But, now there is a plinth, ten-foot high;
Thirty years gone, with herself dead and buried,
It celebrates the architect of this later England,
For some to worship and some to despise.

The lady was never for turning, in her grave,
Not the least; a pedestal, a proper place for her
Say those who hark back to dead, old certainties:
A high place, far above the reach of vandal hands.

© BH, 2019

---

Once again, the Poetry24 ‘one Word’ Sunday challenge…

I chose to go my own way and Googled ‘plinth’. Because of a dream I had the night before. It gave me Margaret Thatcher and her hideous memorial, now relegated to Grantham, the town of her beginnings.

I remembered Grantham, having stopped there on a train from Nottingham, trying desperately to connect with the mainline service North to Scotland.

Oh, I remember Grantham, and I knew, even then, the legacy of middle England’s greatest daughter. I ran and ran, across the tracks in my eagerness to escape.

As if, come what May, escape was really possible…

Finally, Margaret Thatcher’s statue on a 10ft plinth, to be erected in Grantham http://en.mercopress.com/2019/02/09/finally-margaret-thatcher-s-statue-on-a-10ft-plinth-to-be-erected-in-grantham