A Man’s World

Edward Cliffe was Father of the Chapel.*Fridays he would collect union subsAs well as a few half-hearted moans

Which he took like a seasoned squaddie:A man used to life being not quiteWhat it should be, knowing in his bones

That was just the way things were and would be.Which was strange when I peer through the fogOf the past and focus on this slight, bald

Man, loud and leery, famous for his rageAnd temper, vile as sudden soot-stained hailAnd rain which soaked the soul and called

Upon the northern grit to triumph likeThe blackened dry-stone silent walls.But an Italian scullion would have blushed

To hear this young man roar and roundly curseThe world and all its ornamental blather -For Eddie was a man who’d not be hushed.

To girls in the Print, he was Effing EdwardA would-be beau, but lost and badly bent –Crippled by his dirty words and dirty books.

He lived in a world of seemly wives,Of slags and sisters who knew their place.But the skilled men knew, whatever his looks,

Whatever his mein, he still was a manIn this ancient plot where the womenWere barred from the leading, serious roles.

Yet the play lost its lure; the plot grew staleAnd the script that the actors strained to readWas a ragged mess full of moth-eaten holes -

A farce I was in - a farce for purblind fools.

*Shop floor union representative