Sunrays sweep the courtyard as nature’s brief introspection

Caresses chimneys, quiet and coarse like Irishmen’s speech,

To polemically galvanise

Potential clouds over Ancoats from a primordial distance

And breed deformed progeny of downpour

With caustic rivulets

.

Hid in glassblowers’ hesitant self-knowledge

Premeditated movement of determined hand

Scatters purposes of sententious posturing

Canonised proletarian effort

To inert absoluteness

There truly are absent saints in dead churches

.

Hephaestus taught them the prudent anatomy

Of iron perseverance

Of gilded effacement

Of poverty’s tamed arrogance

Of sparsely ambitious lamentation

.

As tribalism of fluid hymns anointed eternities contained

Within twelve hours – a crooked spike of moral condemnation

Borne like a standard on the lips of devils

As unholy apotheosis that only a drop of sweat

Fallen on a warm soil doggedly contradicts