Ancient Relics

I looked at ancient relics

The culture of my fathers, my uncles

and I could not understand

Because they were not for me.

There is an old man in a trilby hat

Chewing on a cigar

Counting out his money

He is a fortress for his family

and these old, brutal sports

Beside the greyhound

Racing track of dreams.

Fathers, you have drowned me

And my sisters

For so many years

In a prison of your making,

Built on pride and fears.

But I forgive you

As I watch you there

Tired old hands

Steel eyes

Body braced for battle.

A dying breed

A dying sport

Another working-class tradition

Our society will abort.

And welcome a new world

Of beautiful things

All hues and shapes

Clothed and draped

In a different future.

And dogmatic identities

Consigned and buried within

The walls of dogmatic dog grounds

Wimbledon

White City

Walthamstow

Romford

And these men will go with them –

No doubt gallantly

And their women will be freed.

And a world of whiteness

And starched systematic views

And stiff-upper-lipness

Will sink into the new.

But the men and women

Of the racecourse –

Remain unjustly consigned

To these crimes

For each held belief

Is a sign of the times

Every community is from a place of love

A place to belong

And when it’s all gone

We’ll miss it

I’ll salute you uncle

Respect your right to history

I’ll say goodbye and kiss it.

We’ll put your culture to bed

And grow flowers in its place.

But we won’t let die with it

Families that survived Thatcher,

When community became property

The real drain on society

And on the mausoleums

Of unloved tracks

They will erect a prison

To replace the old

And we realise like vultures

The landowning class

Destroy all other cultures

Build dystopian fairgrounds

On demolished towns.

We must respect the dead

Replace the bones of what’s left

Embrace all that’s wonderful and new

whilst remembering those used and abused

the catastrophic attack on industry -

their trouble and strife

but what use for a wife

when you have no place to call a home?

And we’ll bury the remains

but we won't leave them to be

demolished by a city

that does not recognise

a dying culture must be revitalised.

So the ground will not be dredged

it will be nourished and kept

the growth of a new world order

and a place for the women and your daughters

there’s more than enough left

land home community prosperity

- the myth of austerity -

we need not be bereft.