Celebrated poet Ian McMillan has penned a new poem about the significance of the famous Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post clock tower as developers are urged to clean up the Leeds landmark.

Here is Mr McMillan’s new poem, called It’s Yorkshire Time!, in full…

IT’S YORKSHIRE TIME by Ian McMillan

From dawn to dusk it’s always there,

A lighthouse in the gorgeous Yorkshire air;

A poem, a song, a work of art

Vivid as a beating Yorkshire heart.

From a double decker bus or a gentle stroll

Here is something that makes us whole

Glimpsed sidelong from a terraced street

A sight that makes our life complete.

Here was ‘the news from where you are’

Lighting up the city like a shooting star

Here were the headlines, deadlines, scoops,

The deaths of kings, the marching troops.

Events across the world’s wide map

Where the local and the global overlap.

Our Cleopatra’s Needle, our Eiffel Tower

Where words and pictures pulsed with power.

In an empty wood, when a lone tree falls

Can it be heard beyond the night owl’s calls?

If something this important fades away

What will our kids and grandkids say?

You wouldn’t just let Stonehenge fall down,

Or the Statue of Liberty simply drown

So let’s have a future for this clock tower

That told the truth as it told the hours;

A bright tomorrow for this thoughtful space

Built around pride in a Yorkshire place;

Fashioned from unchanging facts

Solid as gleaming railway tracks.

On Yorkshire’s door, hear the future knock:

What time is it? It’s Leeds o’clock!

Yorkshire Post and Evening Post clock tower campaign: Ian McMillan pens new poem as clean-up urged