Hoardings shouting at the street, <br />those in buses reading as they pass <br />of perfume, razor blades and Guinness, <br />selling space and advertising <br />keeping secret from the public <br />the future of their city, <br />JCBs moving piles of earth <br />to mold a future better than the past, <br />where once workers toiled, <br />houses cheek-by-jowl, back allies, <br />terrace rows and corner shop, <br />midst laughter, spinning tops and shawls <br />smutted wash lines wall to wall. <br />Evening pubs with glittering mirrors <br />nicotine ceiling and sawdust floors, <br />counters lined with glasses, <br />as hooters sound the end of day, <br />on the way to home, to crowded streets, <br />seagulls on the cliffs at Flambro' <br />(how did they know which nest?) . <br />wife and kids around the table, <br />scrubbed, white, no cloth hiding knots, <br />armchair for Dad, stools for the kids, <br />chair, beside the sink, for Mam. <br />Pigeons to feed and whippets, <br />shoes to sole and wood to chop, <br />fishing canals for roach and pike, <br />barges low with coal and pots from Stoke. <br />Smells of tanning, thumping hammers, <br />freight trains through the night, <br />flashing furnace fires, bed <br />by ten and up at six. <br />Blake's 'Jerusalem' on a school piano.<br /><br />John Rickell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/building-site-walsall-uk/
