What If...?

Though I'll never support their football or ice hockey teams, I've always loved visiting the nearby city of Sheffield. Especially on a sunny Friday. More often than not, it's the memories of passing through en-route to somewhere further north in Yorkshire, or Scotland... "In Yorkshire, near Rotherham, he had been on the ramble", so sings Cara Dillon. I'm such a traveller!

Sometimes though, like today it's just for a wee visit. I think Sheffie is a really friendly, really diverse, really youthful city. That's probably because it's such a student city. Maybe the reason why I really like Sheffie is because secretly deep down I wish I was still a student?

Whatever the reason for being here, I've always had cause to spend some time reflecting; Sometimes on days gone by, places far away and friends unseen for a long time, and sometimes just on my love of my home, northern England. It's fitting then that on the side of one of Sheffield Hallam's buildings, we find a poem by Andrew Motion, entitled 'What If...?'

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 dreaming is re-paid,
The lives which wait unseen as yet, unread.