River Parrett Trail
Poems
POEM FOR ALBERT STREET CUTTING, BRIDGWATER (Final Version)
NAVIGATORS
HARD GRAFT
SINEW AND BONE
JOLT OF THE PICK
CRACK OF THE HAMMER
IRON ON STONE
RED QUANTOCK
WE CAME AND WENT
OUR LEGACY
A BOAT
COMING CLEAN
THROUGH THE HILL
Tony Charles with local people
Dig your shovel, swing your pick; Clay on your boots, boys, heavy and thick. Firkin's empty, got no porter, All we've got is clay and water... Sweat makes it hazy, blisters appear; Old James Green, we'll bury him here. Firkin's empty, got no porter, All we've got is clay and water... Better get moving, better dig in; Iron Horse coming, we can't win. Firkin's empty, got no porter, All we've got is clay and water... Molly's waiting for my kisses; Soon be rich, boys - don't tell the missus! Firkin's empty, got no porter, All we've got is clay and water... We just want the landlords daughter! Liz Charles, Genista Lewes, Ed Stocker, Damian Webb NAVVIES Sunblind or skindrenched, snowblown on January mornings when the frosted pickshaft takes the skin off your hands; three hundred days each like another: sweat and raw muscle, the jarring of iron on stone; axe and crowbar, ditching spade and crack of the hammer. Cattle browse these wet lowlands, where a boy leans on his stick to watch us working. He smirks, thinks we are all mad here. Ten months now of bare rock and subsoil, then the damned rock again, down to the level where Master James Green can levy his twopence a ton on the lime trade. Ten months' damp canvas, night fires, cold stars, the bubbling of Summer curlews in long grass, clatter of cooking pans; and Bridgwater over the rise, the old church with its slender pale spire, alehouses and girls. The local men hate us. My girl sleeps in Birmingham, in a cold bed. Masons chop roughcuts from the red Quantock and build behind us as we go opening the ground like split fruit, racing against the railway, knowing we can only lose. When I get paid off, I'll be out of here; but that farm boy will see a thing he never bargained for: a boat coming through the hill. Tony Charles
