A Derelict Engineering Factory In South Birmingham

This was my place of work
from when I left school
a fresh-faced temporary clerk
wielding pencil and slide rule
wary of the foundry's hot den
and its thick coat of grime,
the red-blooded talk of men
on the assembly line.

It was Uncle Leonard
who got my foot in the door
30 years a dedicated steward
supervising the shop floor,
his office furnished in dark teak
with a pipe rack and portrait of
the queen.
From the fag-end of the 3-day-week
to George V's visit in 1915

he guided me through the traditions
of this place, its sorrows and laughter
showed me where they made munitions
for the first war and the one after.
"Twenty thousand women and youth
fed bullets to the Allied front line.
The ARPs laid grass on the roof
so Goering's killers flew blind."

All dust now, like the bitumen
furnace where I snagged a crafty smoke,
the ghostly phalanx of Angel-women
who made cartridge clips and smote
anti-tank devices from liquid metal cast,
all disappeared to thin air
the crumbling brickwork turned to ballast
for unlaid roads that will lead to who
knows where.

I stand at this boarded-up place
and reflect on what might have been
had I accepted Leonard's grace,
seen out my time from age 17.
I chose a different path to roam:
it led beyond factory gates and away
from the stench of cordite, acetone
that catches still ill-winds today.