the empty inkwells

the empty inkwells

well far back the glass black tips

are borne by railway veins and

terraces of doorsteps shining bright

and black-leaded grates and fenders

and waisted wives in curlers and aprons

and sleeves rolled up to the day’s work

for the chapel stands and the pub stands

and the shops queue for bacon slicers

to sing of gossip for the cold room doors are closed 

the brasso tins and carbolic attitudes to

all tillaged and turned in furrowed 

brows that say they never did did they

the works hooters blow the time for what time

it is to do what ever is done at that time and

every day the works hooters blow at that time

when the furnaces drop the cupola loads and 

sparks fly like wasps or burrs down socks and

necks scarred in the tattoo of metal splinters

claimed as their own until the six foot box

stores all for the midden ages to come

pelting down the slag tips and the smelter dross

tipped by drams on chains of thought like

valve-veins engorged with standing at the furnace

doors that are all green in the stone cottages that

are all as clean and tidy as the front parlour is 

armchaired in aspic polish and glass cabineted 

with bald heirlooms and books of pressed petals

tulip blood never opened like the poppy tombs

on the battle field of neighbourliness 

never-the-less there are more spider webs of memory here

that call to manacled toil and hard chit dust

trusting in each other and not the masters at the

other side of town never down wind of these

sulphurous guts of metalled seams and cold streams

and dreams of sundays on the hillside above the 

below and skylarked smarting tears in the wind of

no change that never will ever change is questioned not

either now or back down there

every soul entombed in rusty-railinged chapel’s overgrown

graveyard corners dry knotweed browned and still of

dead nests and birds that have flown back to earth

where the rivers run in white culvert blood back to the seas 

that seize every thing they see and thee is a chapel word 

for you know what they say about the deacon’s dusty suits

and vestry whispers cobwebbed in teacupped crinoline and

windolene and shoe polish Sunday lunch and death’s snooze

until the cat wails dawn on another day of toil and the 

inkwells are dry in the school desks but the chalkboards

still spell the times tables of time added up