Distance
By Parson Thru
- 7996 reads
It’s an hour after class
I’m sitting in the living shade
a fountain playing to my right
Voices echo from the patio tiles
energised by mid-day sun
Heaney’s “New Selected Poems"
lies on the table by my glasses case
His words lie heavy on my mood
Boyhood workshops infiltrate my thoughts
The smell of metal
Kiss of edge on surface, keening steel
like butter skimmed to spread on toast
I long to stand inside those 'shops, long gone
where men and boys applied the skills they’d culled
passed like stories from one generation to the next
I sense the distance
Like the pack-horse men who watched engines
hauling loads unimagined clear through the hill
If those factories stood today
would I wish myself back
among machine tools and the taste of steel?
Leaf patterns dance upon the page
Languages blend in the shade
Those painted walls seemed as permanent
as our trade secure
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Such an evocative poem.
Such an evocative poem.
- Log in to post comments
It's worrying
looking back, sometimes. Old pals who took apprenticeships at 16 haven't lifted a tool in 30 years. Policemen some of them, or RAC men. The lucky few might do some shop-fitting though they're time-served carpenters and joiners. One lathe-turner stayed after a rugby tour to Apfeldoorn and sells cars to rich Dutch businessmen. I was no horny-handed son of the soil, I had an office job, then a post office job, doubtless these kinds of jobs will be roboticised soon. In the supermarket in Traben-Trarbach today I was looking for the bakery counter. It was a machine, press the buttons, wait for the bread to come out. 25 choices... an old lady walked away from it shaking her head.
I loved this poem. One of your best. Do you need the last line?
- Log in to post comments
Fantastic. So heavy. So
Fantastic. So heavy. So Heaney! The sound and the touch of everything here is razor sharp and they all come together to the transcendent ending. I'm with Ewan on the last line. If he doesn't want it can I have it?
- Log in to post comments
I like "living shade" And the
I like "living shade" and "keening steel".
And the link between skills and stories. Story teller used to be a very respectable trade
we are always wrong, were, are, will be, because we are intelligent enough to know we make mistakes, but not enough to stop :0)
- Log in to post comments
2nd stanza cut "nostalgia/a
2nd stanza cut "nostalgia/a dangerous and treacherous companion"
4th stanza, maybe combine lines 1 & 2 to read "Boyhood workshops, the smell of metal"
lead lines of stanzas 5.6. and 7 something to look at
minor other quibbles, but fluid, and literate, as usual
agree with Ewan, cut that last line.
- Log in to post comments
Put that last line on ebay -
Put that last line on ebay - it sounds like you might start a bidding war!
Another wonderful travelogue, but this time to the past - thank you parson
- Log in to post comments
I came late to this so I don
I came late to this so I don't know if the last line in question is the existing last line or a previous last line? Just checking, before I place my bid.
- Log in to post comments
Evocative - Phil Sid is right
Evocative - Phil Sid is right.
I remember - I have to, I'm a tedious person who has done loads of short-term jobs - doing the time-sheets for Metal Box on the Alperton Industrial estate when I was 16. A summer job, agency work from Brook Street Bureau. The machines had names Jig Mill, Jig Bore aka Moore and Agie Newell. Who was Agie? She was a spark erosion machine. The guy working her wore gogs and I just about remember a tub of fluid, a metal wand and green(?) sparks.
- Log in to post comments
"we had the light shop and
"we had the light shop and the heavy shop" How do you sell light? Or heavy, come to that? Or was it the shop itself? Imagining a floating shop and another shop with very strong gravity :0)
- Log in to post comments
Metal Box may have been
Metal Box may have been 'light shop'. It was a small factory which employed about 20 machinists, all men. I walked from my desk in the main office through the workshop to hand the timesheets to my supervisor. I have no idea where the finished work went.
- Log in to post comments
Our wonderful facebook and
Our wonderful facebook and twitter pick of the day - do share :)
- Log in to post comments
the work was hard, loud and
the work was hard, loud and often noxious. Because of our youth we don't know that. Because of our age, we forget that.
- Log in to post comments