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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

WORK SONG

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