Chainmakers: The Long Cry

Un long crie d’indignation retentit en ce moment

 

It’s the brewus I works in, out the back. Roar up heat,

fuel the furnace, forge dull links, beat blackened skin.

It roasts our innards, blasts our hot breath thin.

 

And the ring of it, the slam of the hammer, the clang

that cleaves my head at night, the red mist, the times

I’m reeling as the sun droops and the dark digs in.

 

Cradley’s, Craigie Heath, Quarry Bank and Netherton.

Reece’s down Maple Tree Lane. High Town is our rack –

we’re Black Country, pounding pig iron, bloom and slack.

 

It’s tricky work, chaining steel with our stringed hands,

wetting sweated backs. Watch for sparks as cut-offs fly,

birth the babby, back to work and wait for heat to die.

 

It’s all spoil to us – we just makes our bread. Millie though

reaches a grimy hand to grab a spark, search the floor

for dull hot scrap. She won’t make that mistake no more

 

not since I bound her up. It did heal, though she’s the welt

to larn her, the chainmakers’ fetter now she’s not so thin.

White slaves we are. I put white lard on her weeping skin.

 

I tells her not to touch, not trip, not grip hot sparks, hot scrap,

not put it back ‘til its cold, not fold a soft hand round rod iron,

sulking black. I says I’ll leg-iron her if she don’t pack it in.

 

We beat the little ones, the links. Paid by the hundred-weight,

it’s just the way of it, that’s what I say. Tuppence halfpenny

didn’t help poor Lizzie, did it, when she passed away?

 

‘A long cry of indignation is echoing today’; L’Intransigeant, (Paris, 1897).

 

 

 

Connie Markievicz

 

The countess stops in the doorway.

What plans and schemes are here

as pale light washes the raw planked floor.

She presses the heels of her button gloved hands

together, holds dust moted air like a lily.

 

Room for the easel by the window,

the dressing case to go upstairs.

She pulls a brown overall from the dun valise

then over her head with it to tab her two hips,

telling of just the one child and a silk kimono.

 

She steps through to the low back kitchen,

admires the stone larder slab, the bleached

wooden slats that frame the chipped sink.

The table bears a coarse blue jug, yellow-bright

with jonquils and small herbs of the season.

 

And a note, cream paper, a flourish of script –

Read these – they may be of interest. Pages curl.

She turns to bang a zinc kettle under the gush

of the tap, waits the carter to come from the back.

Words will rise, they will rise. They will rise.

 

 

 

Wolves

 

Windows are sharp and brittle things.

In our bungalow they are often open,

even at night when anyone could come.

 

Once my sister saw a curious face

in the opening, like a blueish full moon.

She jumped up to pull the curtains tight

and fled back to bed.

 

She did not tell my mother.

 

At night windows change.

In my dreams they melt away.

That’s when the wolves come

slinking along the shadowed wall,

where the grass tufts are thin

in the gravel gully.

 

I know they are there by their breathing.

I have to keep quiet but they are there.

Soon their rough snouts will snuffle the opening,

dark shapes will flow over the window sill

into the blackness under my bed

 

where my childhood sleeps.