One of the very first poems I had published basck in nineteen yibblty-yibble (and I'm still only 39 OK!) It won a prestigious award in 1971 for poems depicting industrial life. The poem is about the decline of the once mighty Lancashire Cotton Industry. The very pedestrian rhythm was used not only to enhance the atmosphere of deline and decay but to echo the beat of the weaving looms as they monotonously tapped away the seconds of the workers lives.
I brought it here now because I see all the same mistakes being made in other industries.

Obsolete the mill now stands,
Its windows smashed by vandals hands.
Part of an age that came and went
and left it as a monument.
Where once the doors hung tall and wide
a gaping hole now leads inside
to where each empty, cavernuous floor
remembers when, in years before
hundreds came to work each day,
hob - nails ringing through the gate
mingling with the din of looms
that echoes still in silent rooms
where many weavers work worn hands
worked the cloth that clothed the land.
Just simple workmen they, and yet
an empire was built on their sweat.


They trusted when employers promised
a means to live ‘til living passed,
but the cotton trade outlived its day,
the mill was closed, it did not pay.
the looms were smashed and sold for scrap,
the rest was auctioned lot by lot,
but human surplus can't be sold.
The workers were just told to go.
Dismissed without a word of thanks
and equipped to work at little else.


A place once full of life had died
and no — one cared and no — one tried
to put the mill to any use
it stood and suffered time’s abuse
became a scar upon the changing face
of the town that is its resting place.
And now to walk among the ghosts
and touch the shadows of the past
is to walk within a history book,
each page a man’s lifetime of work.


The stories of ten thousand lives
are stored within this vast archive
where dust has settled, rot set in
and spiders weave instead of men.