A Wider View

• ''From the backyard of his back-to-back,''
• ''my great-great-grandad searched for spaces''
• ''in the smoke-filled sky to stack his dreams,''
• ''high enough above the cholera to keep them''
• ''and his newborn safe from harm.''
• ''In eighteen sixty-nine, eyes dry with dust''
• ''from twelve hours combing flax beneath''
• ''the conicals of light in Marshall's Temple Mill,''
• ''he took the long way home because''
• ''he craved the comfort of a wider view.''
• ''As he passed the panelled gates of Tower Works,''
• ''the tall octagonal crown of Harding's chimney''
• ''drew his sights beyond the limits of his working life''
• ''drowned the din of engines, looms and shuttles''
• ''with imagined peals of ringing bells.''
• ''Today, my footsteps echo in the sodium gloom''
• ''of Neville Street's Dark Arches and the red-brick vaults''
• ''begin to moan as time, collapsing in the River Aire,''
• ''sweeps me out to meet him on the Wharf.''
• ''We stand now, timeless in the flux of time, anchored''
• ''only by the axis of our gaze - a ventilation shaft''
• ''with gilded tiles, and Giotto's geometric lines -''
• ''while the curve of past and future generations''
• ''arcs between us.''