Annotations

From the backyard of his back-to-back,

my great-great-grandad searched for spaces

in the smoke-filled sky to stack his dreams,

high enough above the cholerato keep them

and his newborn safe from harm.

In eighteen sixty-nine, eyes dry with dust

from twelve hourscombing flax beneath

the conicals of light in Marshall’s Temple Mill,

he took the long way home because

he craved the comfort of a wider view.

As he passed the panelled gates of Tower Works,

the tall octagonal crown of Harding’s chimney

drew his sights beyond the limits of his working life

drowned the din of engines, looms and shuttles

with imagined peals of ringing bells.

Today, my footsteps echo in the sodium gloom

of Neville Street’s Dark Arches and the red-brick vaults

begin to moan as time, collapsing in the River Aire,

sweeps me out to meet him on the Wharf.

We stand now, timeless in the flux of time, anchored

only by the axis of our gaze — a ventilation shaft

with gilded tiles, and Giotto’s geometric lines—

while the curve of past and future generations

arcs between us.