Exiting Sheffield Railway station, this poem on the wall is one of the first things a traveller sees.
Written by poet laureate Andrew Motion the poem adorns the side of a Hallam University building and was written for the 2007 Off The Shelf literature festival.
It reads:
O travellers from somewhere else to here
Rising from Sheffield Station and Sheaf Square
To wander through the labyrinths of air,
Pause now, and let the sight of this sheer cliff
Become a priming-place which lifts you off
To speculate
What if..?
What if..?
What if..?
Cloud shadows drag their hands across the white;
Rain prints the sudden darkness of its weight;
Sun falls and leaves the bleaching evidence of light
.
Your thoughts are like this too: as fixed as words
Set down to decorate a blank facade
And yet, as words are too, all soon transferred
To greet and understand what lies ahead -
The city where your dreamling is re-paid,
The lives which wait unseen as yet, unread.
More info:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2007/11/01/andrew_motion_poem_feature.shtml
Katharine
