Mary Evans - Poems and Pictures

Picture No. 10218073 Â© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Iron Catacomb
by Chris Hardy

HMS Belfast, Pool of London.

Parked bright-flagged unmoving in the river,
on board are mummies that were never dead.
White gowned gunners like paralysed surgeons
aim twelve miles out to Junction four.

Black cliffs advance rank after rank,
will kill you on deck and in the drink.
Hold fast as the bow lifts and the screw bites,
approach the monstrous shadow in the dark.

Star shells over North Cape celebrate a holocaust.
Beneath the sea a thousand skulls look up
and grin at Christmas presents they received
beneath glittering Arctic chandeliers.

Chris Hardy has travelled widely and now lives in London. His poems have been published in Stand; Tears in the Fence; The Dark Horse; The Interpreterâ€™s House; The North; The Rialto; ink sweat and tears, the compass magazine and many other places. He is in LiTTLe MACHiNe (described by Carol Ann Duffy as â€˜The most brilliant music and poetry band in the worldâ€™), performing their settings of well-known poems at literary events in the UK and abroad. His fourth collection, Sunshine at the end of the world, was published by Indigo Dreams Publications in 2017. Roger McGough said about the book: â€˜A guitarist as well as a poet Chris Hardy consistently hits the right note, never hits a false noteâ€™ and Peter Kennedy, in London Grip says, â€™Chris writes vivid, expository poetry often heavy with portent and mystery. Each of these poems is a story as beautifully muscular and slippery as an eelâ€™.

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