On Cinder tracks a bairn knows (St Vincent's Orphanage, Newcastle Upon Tyne Winter 1960)

Me balls

Not yet grown

Were frozen

Chips

Tha ached

Wid things ta come

Winter’s

Fingers of ice 

Were scraping lacerating nails

Inta ma gut

Me knees chaffed

Me teeth clacking

Me eyes achin' 

Me ears burnin’ numb

Me feet wet

Freezing 

Ta the hard ground

Nowt of me were warm

Sent oot by ta nuns ta play

Threadbare shorts and raggedy grots

Stained yella and sour with piss 

Stinkin’ wet socks

An’ cardboard shoes comin’ apart

A holey jumper down ta me knees

On me own

Walking, endlessly ploddin’

Tryin’ ta remember warmth,   love,   me ma an all

Wishin’ I were home but not that home

Me eyes staring harder than sight

Inta grey tha's leet when its almost gone

When startled by a shiftin' shape

Adrift, fallen from a tree in a scree of feathers

Plunging ta ground

Squeezing light threw its blackness 

As ta snow began ta form

Part ice, part light, part tears unmourned

An’ the burd was nowt like a hawk

Nor of tha fear in me throat

The burd were more

Like a raggedy arsed crow

A man out looking for a drink

Shufflin’ in its black worn coat

As miserable as me

Trying to fly

Agin' lacerating eddies of Arctic spit

The snow now like grit

And the grit like salt

And the cinder path

Stretching out afore me

More desolate than afore

A tunnel without its walls

A disused rail track to nowhere

Nowhere that I could run

An’ I mewled like a rabbit kitten

Awaiting the hawk