'Young Lovers in Roseville' (The Black Country, 1975)

Young Lovers in Roseville

(The Black Country, 1975)

This remains
the drab-glam three-day life

the Fifties at least were honest
turned out shallow pockets

confessed without pressing
that yesterday ran off with the paints

she still finds confetti
when she sits at her mom’s replaced dresser
curves a mirror round her nape
like a radiation gun

little land
spavined by fatman history

but pledged to cripple on in dad’s boots
hooked and eyed in a New England

his ribs are still raw
from velveteen elbows
between the lych-path
and the flock of old tin cans

Roseville is nice
carriage lamps
come early to porch-frames
before they’re suppled and dried

but the people sigh their colours
from their faces and their clothes

Instamatics catch this truly
but decades on are called cheap

he hears the chat
on the Wolverhampton bus
a job’s come up in Bloxwich

suddenly he’s travelling
with adversarial mullets

Julian is a good name
says her mother
or otherwise Christobel
as though something posh
can rout the future

Wolverhampton was
the workshop of the world
it said so on the franking
to the left of her head

just the fitments now
a bit of a counter out front
remnants at cost

the Bloxwich job
goes to a mate
who changes pubs.

Waiting at the decade’s end
something that really does mean it
heels back a little more each time
against its brittle chain.

(Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979) 

--published in Under The Radar (Nine Arches Press), December 2014.

The Old Chainyard, Roseville Square: