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There’s not much round here now, you say,
just huddled brick or pebbledash terraces,
and tiny new-builds where the pitheads were.
Bare hills fly up beyond the town you left,
with clasps of scree, caps of sodden green,
pitched above the neat slate pitches
but your eyes stay on the road. The side streets jut
left and right, so many of them, like ribs.
You jab a finger: We lived up top of that one.
Then – surprise – a pale sun picks at a slit
in the paper sky. Yellow slaps down
momently, and slides along the valley,
and the half-a-pit-wheel trenched in the roundabout
shimmers, red as gut. We won’t stop here
and most of the shops (Kebabland, USA Nail’s,
Milan Fashions) are shut or boarded anyway.
The four lads pincering fags outside the Co-op,
gobbing and shoving, repulse for what they are.
It’s no use knowing better, more, you say.
And in blue spray paint, the back of the village sign
cries “DING DONG!!”. Like we’re waiting at a door.
Rory Waterman lives in Nottingham. His debut collection, Tonight the Summer’s Over, is a PBS Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Prize.
Related
This article appears in the 27 Apr 2016 issue of the New Statesman, The new fascism