Sediment IX

An atom inside each universe  

Each universe an atom

We live on the crust

The earth beneath our feet

Is spinning and the universe

Is spinning on its own axis

Electrons and quarks

Invisible sparks

Oh there is a light that never goes out

And I can see it from my bedroom window

At Stanlow Oil Refinery in Ellesmere Port

That flaming chimney

This ancient alchemy

Refining the sun and the salt

Holy electricity

Blessed mercury

The endless process can never stop

Rocksavage clouds transform

Base metal into gold

Phosgene, chlorine

Mustard Gas for the trenches

My own blood died there

John Nolan

James Nolan

Just kids

Brothers from a foreign tongue

Their little names

Carved with precision into that lying cross

Oh the sins of mankind

Can never be forgiven

By the Gods of the deserts

And the Gods of the mountains

And the Gods of the rivers

And the Gods of the sun

And the Gods of the forests

And the Gods of the Seas

And the Gods of the Skies

The lies they tell, those heathen lies

For King and Country

For Queen and democracy

And all those dead sons are dead for ever

It’s all coincidence

Egg and seed

We bleed on the fields

To nourish the soil

And pay for that devil’s oil

That lubricates the wheels

Of industry

And the shareholders

Demand a dividend

So that no man can be called evil

In abstract symbols

Upon a spreadsheet

Lights flashing on a screen

Unseen

Unseen

Unclean

Unclean

We waded into the cut

From the beach

At ferry Hut

The texture of oil

The stench of death

As we swam to Gantry Wall

And surfed on the backwash

Of two tugs in procession

The black Mersey mud

Transformed boys into demons

Walk across the flats

To West Bank

Lancashire treacle

Spike Island

Wigg island

Islands in the sun

Randles Works

Hush Hush making Hun Stuff

Arsenic inheritance

Bury it under that wasteland

Where families picnic

Infront of the Eight Towers

Old fuels from ancient floors

We will see it no more

Holding sway over this

Disgusting decay

Play now, my children!

Dance upon that rotten tip

The second summer of love

Strip this history bare

But wear rubber raving gloves

You might infect your fingers

And that acid egg stink lingers

From the ghosts of chemical saviours

Men of Industry

Pious and proud

Their names still celebrated

Blue Plaques for slavers

Cotton brokers

Futures markets

The Day Old Dixie Died

These bearded priests are sanctified

Aldermen and masons

Who knew nothing of the craft

Keystones and the kula dravya

The adoration of the Magi

We bring gifts

Of coal, salt and leather

Mimosa and sumac

To tan the raw skins

Of a million sacrificial beasts

And the machine shits out

Its excrements into that drain

High water, heavy rain

It runs into the back yards

Of the worker ants that feed it

Moloch demands the blood

Of sons and daughters

As a sacrament

Repent!

Repent!

Transgress and destroy

Those temples and altars

Constructed to control

The cogs of this insatiable machine

And when it boils down

To its purest essence

None of it matters

Return now to the thing that made you

And the things that you made

Will join you in grey matter

And we will sing those songs again

When weightless things are weighed