Carole Bromley, poet

Whip-ma-whop-ma-gate

The shortest street with the longest name,
it hasn’t always been the same:
Witnourwhatnourgate, 1505
(Don’t ask me. I wasn’t alive!)
then Whitney Whatneygate instead.
They once chucked eggs and mouldy bread
at men and women in the stocks
for vagrancy, or stealing socks
and that might just explain the whip
or so you’re told on the tourist trip.
Its three addresses make me laugh
One, One A and One and a half!
This poem will be short and sweet
like the longest name for the shortest street.

From Ghosts and Ginnels

Clifford’s Tower

There’s not much to see in the castle, it’s true
except for the walls, the stairs and the view
but I didn’t mind, just ran up and down,
peered over the edge at the river, the town

but then came the voice from a phone in the wall
that talked about stuff I did not know at all;
I was shocked at what happened to people right here
where I stood; their cries seemed to ring in my ear,

I felt I could see them and touch them; the stones
echoed with footsteps. I wasn’t alone
as I walked down the steps of that grassy mound
where thousands of daffodils sprang from the ground

and all afternoon on the open-top bus
they would haunt me. People. Just people. Like us.

From Ghosts and Ginnels