Ey up (sweet Matlock) where I first obtained

Place from that place where perfect place remained,

And where the boozers gave their full consent

I should have power their closure to lament,

Where dingy premises willed me to indite

Saudade stories of the soul’s delight.

Ey up (sound place) I left behind with all

Its sarky glories rolled up in a ball;

Never would my sad eyes again behold

Those pleasure gardens where my fags were rolled.

Yet you (great Masson), mistress of that place,

Whose springs sprang tears that ran down your cliff-face,

Vouchsafe to sink down in those workings past,

As worldly joys were seams that could not last,

Or as sunk echoes of celestial stars

Were dimly winking in the ceiling’s quartz.

Oh how the thought of you takes me mesen

Back with new eyes to see old parts again!

The muddy Derwent with ochre spangles slid

Through the sun’s hands like a naughty kid.

The magpies cackled as they pillaged nests

While hawks stripped off spread pigeons’ bloody breasts

And woods of song resounded with the praise

We’d sing ourselves if we but had the ways.

Oh how me thought each plant, each flower, each tree

Was Matlock Matlocking to Matlock me!

The very hills right vastly did sit back,

Riber, Masson, Oker, Stanton, Slack,

And as I set my feet, they still did rise,

As if they thought me Sisyphus in disguise

And steady rain ran down their sides to flood

Crown Square brim-full and as you knew we would

We grumbled gladly in our flat-voweled speech

A climax of complaint we loved to reach.

Our swelling hearts were waxing full of pride

At how our own trumped Mansfield’s countryside.

Round Upperwood how often did I slorm

Hungover saying Jesus Christ it’s warm

With friends to sit above the woodland’s edge

And swig and root for wisdom in a hedge.

Like Moses did we mount the holy hill

To take our pleasures, smoking or a pill;

Between the cowpats did our souls delight

To hear the skylarks klaxoning at height

Above us where we sat above the town

And still exulted on the walk back down

Through Masson’s summer evening and the grass

That shook to watch another future pass.

 

Therefore sweet memory do thou retain

That Matlock past, which will not turn again.

When with a quick, laconic nod I left,

It signalled Matlock-style I felt bereft,

Shyly implying yes I said yes I will Yes

I will return to find me happiness,

But it was only for a weekend fling

I went back there, from time to time. The thing

About Matlock is you can’t do owt

To please it and there is no antidote

To loving there. Matlock must be borne

Like a load or goitre made of Midlands scorn

While all the other places that you’ve been

Are Matlocks moulded out of Plasticine:

I’ve been around the counties in my time,

And Europe too, the Ryanair sublime:

I saw Masson in Heidelberg’s high woods,

Pastel de nata’s like a Bakewell pud,

Slovenian karst’s a spit of Bonsall, and

I prefer Little, not Mittel, Switzerland.

Matlock’s my metre, and my key as well.

In castles I saw Riber’s citadel 

And at the seaside did I mark the card

Of landlocked Matlock’s tawdry promenade.

 

When my commitments kept me so away

That nothing there had power to make me stay,

Yet I retained a grateful drystone mind

Some sacks of hardcore could be stacked behind

With no forgetting when I turned to leave

Those sad precincts, I was powerless to grieve

Since it was Matlock’s grief stuck in my heart

I took with me, and joyed to pull apart

Like a thwarted lover revelling in this,

The sharp refusal of the loved one’s kiss.

But in particular I took the sprawling hill,

The Heights of Abraham, and Masson Mill

Whose red and blackened bricks walled off my care

To breathe the disused lead mines’ stagnant air,

Those cold arteries booming with the sound

Of nothingness beneath the sacred ground

Whose dissolution petrified my home

And left me staring like a mardy gnome

Vexed by dissenting Matlock’s grottoesque

Inert upon a county council desk,

The dreamed Eden and the dreary fact

Entwined like Lumsdale’s gorgeous cataract.

On this old hill, the hill in me, my loss

Lay spoiling on a comfy bed of moss

And in its feverish and fugal state

Was impotent to differentiate

The hill from me, from time, from what was lost,

The Matlock which I kept, from what it cost.

 

Ever and Never in the end the same,

Whether I’m in Matlock or I’m Matlock’s shame

In exile, being Matlock-made I take

Matlock everywhere, a right mistake:

Me head’s the Pav’s cupola, stained and bald;

Tansley and Starkholmes is what me legs are called;

Me arms are Woolley Road and Smedley Street

Held out to hold the map of this conceit

And in me Matlock brain the neurons dance

Incompetently, down The Underpants.

I can’t go back there since there’s what I am.

Place can’t go to place, and doors can’t slam

On their own riddance, sights can’t see

How gazing at them gains eternity.

This last ey up to Matlock here I give,

When I am dead me name in its may live,

Wherein I praise whatever Matlock mocks,

Itself, elsewhere, the past, some pretty rocks,

And always will, duck, while the place remains

My Matlock padlocked shut, myself in chains.