Operating lock gates joining the Manchester Ship Canal to the Mersey estuary (photograph by John Darwell, 1984)
Slow Boat
I found myself
At the site
Of the house
They were building.
They wanted me to say that the odds they’d succeed
Were immense. And sure enough,
Flying buttresses, iron girders, wild horses
Couldn’t have stood on that lot.
I took a look at the quaking ground,
And dug a heel
Which made a hole
That filled with water.
I said: “You’d be better off on a raft”,
And they thanked me for that vision,
And set about building a house
On a concrete base as big as an ocean.
I watched the concrete arrive.
They poured it in the hole,
And while it set I had
Umpteen cups of tea.
Points to note:
Concrete is nine parts air and floats,
But the house stands still-
A sort of very slow boat.
First published
Yellow Crane 7, Autumn 96
In the 1950-60s, 3700 dockers handled over 16 million tonnes of cargo annually (photograph by John Darwell, 1984)
Photographs reproduced by kind permission John Darwell.com
Filed under: Arts, photography, Poem | Tagged: industry, legacy, post-industrial, regeneration | Leave a Comment »
