Middlesbro
An
old man now, why should I sing
Of
the town where I was born and taught,
Yet
sing I must, though hoarse my voice is
And
harsher made by savage anger
At
the degradation of my people
The
rack and ruin of all their labour.
Long,
long ago I left the North
Under
no moon, on a night of midsummer
Turning
my back on the Northern Star,
And
headed for London
Leaving
bitter Tees for sweeter Thames
And
prayed that all went well with me.
A-top
a bank, by weeping willows
-
their leaves as long as ladies fingers –
-
I lingered, thinking to look my last
-
On the place that gave me no contentment
-
And half-afraid
I’d stayed too long.
A
lake of darkness filled Tees Valley
Braided
with loops and strings of street-lamps
Like
the riding lights of a vast armada
Or
as if beneath that black lagoon
Lay
half-submerged a live atlantis
Stealing
it’s light from the stars above
A
glittering City of Steel.
I
heard the sullen stubborn growl
Of
furnace, forge and rolling mill
And
over that bass in mad cadenzas
The
stutter of buffers and couplings
From
shunted trucks in yards and sidings.
As
if before a night attack
With
thudding mutter of muted drums
And
staccato spitting of trumpets
Urging
the trudging legions on.
And
I heard the laboured gasping breath
Of
a thousand men on night shift -
Like
brazen beasts in the metal sheds
Tended
and fed by midnight men.
Forgetting
the lean and famine years
And
all the bitterness and woe –
With
so many men made idle
In
my home-town alone;
laid off
To
sign the book and draw the dole,
Twice
a week in shuffling queue
And
twice a day for dockers
To
say “No work”,
show forty card
That
yellow badge of the unwanted
To
pocket a pittance, the market price
Of
forgotten jobless hopeless men.
And
these were chaps who’d earned big money
Handling
metal – furnace-men; first-hand smelters
Charge-hands,
rollers, sample-passers
The
names and terms - like billet and pig
And
soaking pit come tumbling out
And
all the Half-remembered trades
Of
Fitters, Smelters, Metal Dressers
Riveters,
Platers, Windy Drillers
A
grand roll-call of skills discarded
All
tossed to scrap their occupations
Dead
letters on a Cenotaph.
And
I forgot the barefoot kids
Picketing
the Transporter as the shifts came off,
Raggy-arsed
they begged for bait
For
a bit of bread from a Tommy Tin.
For
evil days were come again
In
the silent valley of the Tees
And
I shall die ‘ere they recover.