The outside steps to the store room
are only a zigzag mark in brickwork now, rx
and there is no smell of brine
where sausage skins were left to soak.
I walk into the yard.
On the right is the bake-house.
My glasses steamed up on cold days
and I worked through finger smears, drugstore
jellied pies,
caught cockroaches,
had tea-breaks.
In the next room
Trevor took the end off his finger in the mincer;
Pop called him a twerp.
The end room is where we boiled hams,
chawls, black-puddings
in three great coppers.
The deep-freezers are empty shells,
only hinges in door-frames
where foot-thick doors once hung.
Reg would never have got out
had Pop not gone back after the telephone call.
Almost as cold as New Zealand lamb
Reg didn’t seem graetful,
just angry,
a string of expletives
as Pop rubbed his hands and shoulders, back and legs.
Reg laughed a funny laugh, then walked home.
‘The alcohol in his blood stream must have saved him’
Pop said.
How did so many beasts fit into this slaughter-house?
I take photographs of rusting hooks,
runnels in the floor,
brambles trailing through a broken window.
There was a scalding tank here,
brim-full of boiling water
where pigs’ heads bounced as I scraped
bristles from shoulders and flanks
leaving flesh as clean and fresh and pink
as a young girls.
My camera flashes and flashes and flashes.
How can walls this thick be bulldozed?
Bank Street Writers
