A Kind of Death

The hillside of grass and ferns was coveredNow with folk settling themselves down.Like spectators at the old public executionsThey huddled together, safe from harm -But no axe was going to fall today.Some knew though that a little piece of theJigsaw we call the past would now be lost.

All eyes were on the tall chimney belowAs I manoeuvred myself betweenTwo men at the front of the crowd.‘I can’t see right properly ‘ cause o’ this bloke.’A woman’s maungy, whining voice, which IIgnored, like the cry of a whingeing child –After all, I thought, I’d walked these hillsAll my life, and my dad had worked his arseOff for most of his life in the noise-filledMulegates of Longwood and Colne Valley.I wish he could have been here to see thisChimney brought down, a surrogate, I’m sureHe would have thought, for ‘Old man Hoyle’,The mill owner as arrogant as anyNorman baron who inherited the earth.

‘I think it’s time.’ The short sentence driftedFrom somewhere in the dense crowd.Someone always seems to know, I thought,When a hooter sounded from below.

And then, and then, a collective sighWhen that ancient chimney began to die.

And when I remember the clouds of thick,Clogging dust filling the valleyWhere the huge mill had once stood,I knew that for some time I would still seeThe vanished mill and its chimney, evenThough my own vision would blur as the yearsWorked their way with me.But in no time at all the past would beSeen through a romantic haze where theWorkers all had a job and a Britain whereEveryone knew their place was called Great.