SLEEPY HOLLOW
There is an industrial museum
where making a wage
was possible,
well, used to be,
the machines are polished bright
but there’s no foreman to duck
in glee
as he’s about to hold a symposium
when we take too long coming
back from a pee,
he knew he couldn’t do without
us
for up the road
is another job
five minutes by bus.
We were the machinists,
they who for export
load,
the furnace men,
the precision toolmakers.
But have they heard of us
these worker-fakers
in their designer torn jeans.
No great belly of fire
makes the roof and walls
gleam,
the massive guillotines
has lost all desire
to cut to length
the steel beams,
the great overhead crane
has lost its muscles,
it thirsts for electric
and creaks in vain.
This gigantic orchestra
no longer even hums,
could a Zarathustra
have forecast
this disempowering,
the pound shop, the food
bank, the call-centre,
the rough sleepers,
zero hour jobs,
the drug culture,
the under-class as yobs,
theme parks
peddling false history,
covering up their own
as a mystery,
the banking vultures,
the Primark-clad benefit-slums.
How we used to wind-up our mates,
a sort of rough love
without the hearts
and doves,
until the machinery starts.
The only sound of banter
now comes from under
Asia’s sweat-shop hoods.
The hooter for five-O-clock
knock-off-time slumbers,
steel shavings from the lathes
don’t roll in the draught
across the wood-block floor,
the ridging machines no longer
sings alto as it ploughs,
and where’s that canteen girl
we once adored.
Now it’s lights out,
lock-up time,
the tourist go,
the limp flag
no longer flows,
damp, bedraggled,
wrapped around the flagpole
curled,
in bold lettering it blags:
`Workshop-of-the-World.’
Labour Affairs Magazine 