LAMENT FOR THE SIX TOWNS

Here's to the coal, canals and clay
that made you Something, yesterday.
Here's to hard-working artisans
who shaped such beauty with their hands;
and to the bottle kilns, whose smoke
would make the workers' children choke.

Oh, my poor hometown
Your fame was from your red soil made
your products cherished and displayed;
practical art,so pleasing.

Six towns into a city bound;
"In unity, may strength be found".
Though "Lilliput"'s what Priestley calls
the six towns, with their six town halls.
No grandeur fuels your civic pride;
no glimpses of horizons wide.

Oh, my poor hometown
I'd raze your narrow streets, and then
build up a New Jerusalem!
A city worth believing.

The pot bank windows, blank and dark,
the tileworks now a retail park.
The paintresses and potters are
laid off at last to work no more.
The Trentham coal mine has become
the local football stadium.

Oh, my poor hometown
Your industry is on its knees
since skilled jobs all went overseas
and the bright kids started leaving.

Eight thousand livelihoods, no less
depended on the tyre press.
Streets dusted, once, with Carbon Black,
the reek of rubber won't come back.
The town a poorer place by far
since steelworks closed at Shelton Bar.

Oh, my poor hometown
No pots, no tyres, no steel, no coal,
The growing business is the Dole
and hope is all-deceiving.

When everything but shops is dying
I wonder who can still be buying.
For hands and brains that once knew skills
there's little joy in working tills.
For those with higher education
here's no career motivation.

Oh, my poor hometown;
those who remain, ambition lack;
my heart knows that I won't be back
among the low achieving.

Oh, my poor hometown;
your poverty and dereliction
are no longer my affliction,
but still I find I'm grieving.