Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BACK FROM KINLOCHLEVEN, by PATRICK MACGILL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BACK FROM KINLOCHLEVEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The waterworks are finished and the boys have / jacked the shovel
Last Line: But at any rate you'll know them by their curses when in town.
Subject(s): Bars & Bartenders; Death; Desolation; Drinks & Drinking; Labor & Laborers; Quarrels; Pubs; Taverns; Saloons; Dead, The; Wine; Work; Workers; Arguments; Disagreements


THE waterworks are finished and the boys have jacked the shovel,
See, the concrete board deserted, for the barrow squad is gone,
The gambling school is bursted, there is silence in the hovel,
For the lads are sliding townwards and are padding it since dawn.
Pinched and pallid are their faces from their graft in God-shunned places,
Tortured, twisted up their frames are, slow and lumbering their gait,
But unto their hopeful dreaming comes the town with lights a-gleaming,
Where the bar-men add more water, and the shameless women wait.

Eighteen months of day shift, night shift, easy, slavish, long or light shift,
Anchorites on musty bacon, crusty bread, and evil tea,
Sweated through the Summer till grim Winter came a hoary pilgrim,
Chasing from the meagre blanket the familiar, flighty flea.
Then the days when through the cutting came the death-white snowflakes drifting,

When the bar was chilled and frosted, and the jumper seared like hell,
When the hammer shook uncertain in the grimy hands uplifting,
And the chisel bounced uncanny 'neath the listless strokes that fell.

But to Him give thanks 't is over and the city fills the distance,
On the line of least resistance they are coming sure but slow,
How they wait the trull and harlot, jail-bird, vagabond and varlet,
For there's many a bob to squander and the city ravens know!
Parasites from pub and alley welcome in the grimed and greasy,
Gather round with wail and plaudit, eager for their dough and gin,
They are coming from the muck-pile and they mean to take it easy,
They have pals to share their joy and incidentally their tin.

They are tabid and outworn, unpresentable, unshorn,
Occupants of many a model, wooers of the harridan,
Workers of the wildernesses, dressing as the savage dresses,
Crawling in the rear of progress, following the march of man.
Where grim nature reigneth lonely over gelid places, only
Known to death and desolation, they have roughed it long and hard,
Where the chronic river wallows in the refuse of the hollows,
And the thunderbolt is resting on the mountain tops it scarred.

But 't is over for the moment, and the heel-end of creation
Vomits back the men who roughed it to the town that sent them forth,
They who face the death it threatened with a grim determination,
They who wrestled with the slayer incarnated in the North —
Go and see them primed with lager, drain them of the coppers sought for
In the depths of desolation, in the byways of the beast,
Go and bum them of the ha'pence that like maniacs they wrought for,
For they bear the famine bravely, but can never stand the feast.

They are coming to the city, soon you'll see their rants and quarrels,
See them marching off to prison, see them drinking day by day,
In the dead end of their labours they forgot your code of morals,
They are ne'er intoxicated in the super-saintly way.
You will know them by their reeking shag, you'll know their way of speaking,
You can spot them by their moleskins and their bluchers battered down,
They are wild, uncultivated, maybe rather underrated —
But at any rate you'll know them by their curses when in town.





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