Among These Dark Satanic Mills

Dusk in the back streets of the town centre,

Moving through the decades,

From Georgian to Victorian,

Early then, crossing the railway,

That steel serpent, snaking from the City to the sea,

Late, turreted gothic flourishes giving way,

To efficient terraces with tiled stoops,

Chipped and pining for Arts and Crafts long since

Supplanted with barely a Deco nod,

By post-war economy.

And here the money stops.

Here the people stopped coming to promenade,

A century before the shutters went down

On shop after shop until

Barbers and Bubble Tea and phone case kiosks

Make Primark a beacon to boast of.

Here, besides the palisade fencing

Shielding trespassers from the rail track,

I hear the men. Loud voices, vexed voices.

I know this patch of track, the place police check first

When desperate men are lost.

I know this patch of town, the stabbings,

The sexual offences, the weekend violence,

The don’t walk alone at night of it.

I peer through the palisade,

Seeking shapes on the almost dark embankment

Where wilderness clamours in snatched ribbons,

Hawthorn and Buddleia as grimed as each other,

Regardless who arrived first.

But the scrub is undisturbed.

I see dark shapes, then, as I round the corner,

One stood, the other slumped

Beneath the chapel of ease,

That remnant of a heyday

When the house of God needed

An overflow, for the working class.

“I can’t believe” said the standing man,

“I cannot believe that you…”

And I kept my eyes averted

From the intoxicated capriciousness

Of his pitch.

But he spoke only to the other man,

Huddled on the pavement,

And not to me.

“I cannot believe that you saw him.”

A disappointment tinged his anger,

A deflation of hope I heard

Even as I passed his sodden sleeping bag,

Not drying on the memorial bench.

Even as he lifted the bottle to his mouth.

“I talk to Jesus every night

But YOU saw him.”

And beneath his slurred words,

I heard him cry out with a loud voice

“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”

And the man at his feet turned his face up

And roared. “I didn’t see Jesus,

I AM Jesus.”

And I walked quickly on,

Towards stained glass panes,

And Edwardian bays,

Afraid of getting hurt.

*

Authors note: Written for sleepy draft's challenge below:

At the end of the day, when I have finished work and collected the kids, and my partner gets in from work, I often go for a walk from my home near the centre of one of the UK's faded seaside towns, loved by the Victorians, but now fighting decrepitude. The foundations for our inner city social problems were laid a long time before the industrial revolution during which our urbanisations mushroomed, but we continue to blame the disadvantaged, or the immigrants, or the mentally ill, for systemic issues perpetuating inequality. Poverty is rife here, and the problems that cycle viciously with it. When I passed these two men, last week, I could see both the humour and the sadness in the overheard exchange. The humour, however, dissipated, while the sadness remained. I do not believe the answer to the issues these men face lies behind the closed doors of the church they were drinking outside, but I was reminded of Blake's poem, "And did those feet in ancient times", decades later set to music and still used to stir a nationalistic pride, and all it invokes. These men's beliefs have a history to them, and though I might question their reality, their validity is not mine to judge.