Redundant was a poem written by Brian Jacques in the early 1980s. The poem was written after UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government began to close mines all over England, docks fell into disuse, and there was not enough work in the country.
Redundant is mentioned by Patricia Lee Gauch in the Redwall US Twentieth Anniversary Gift Package.
The Redwall Wiki believes that Brian Jacques wrote this poem to coincide with the 1984 Liverpool International Garden Festival, and that the following is this specific poem.
Redundant[]
- I saw golden summer sunrise
- Watched the river in full tide
- From the gates of Herculaneum
- All along the riverside
- Docks touched by the hand of time
- Idle and redundant lay
- Tinted golden pink from slumber
- Liverpool stood to face the day
- The gates of dawn were sat the piper
- Open slow and magically
- All the people of the people of the city
- Woke and stretched and blinked to see
- Flowers growing from the earth
- Blooming by a granite quay
- From years of hardship, sweat, and tears
- Where industry lived that went away
- Gardens from the world's far corners
- Waterfalls, broad lakes, and trees
- Chinese temples, Roman columns,
- Wonders from across the seas
- Sculptures, walkways, lawns, and arbors
- Where a soul could dream the hours
- Amid the sight and scent and feel
- Of strange exotic swaying flowers
- Carnivals and music playing,
- Dancing, singing, there again
- Comes a band of happy children
- Waving from a little train
- From up (missing)'s pool
- Down to the Dingle
- Enchantment by the Mersey shore
- Our International Garden Festival Liverpool 1984
- Let the men of other nations
- Witness on this summer morn
- Our city rising like a phoenix
- From its ashes newly born
- God let it be the start of something
- Give us if you only would
- The will to build it
- And to keep it
- Prospering, enduring, good
- Keep the miracle through the seasons
- Flowering like the endless tide
- From the gates of Herculaneum
- All along the riverside
Trivia[]
- "Redundant" was a term used in Britain to describe being forcibly made unemployed - a person without a job because there is no more work at their employer.