1980s Closedown

Decay is measured by how far winter penetrates
or damp hides deep in cracks against the cold;
paintwork flakes away and falls in drifts,
colourless as snow beneath the walls.

Rain comes down in sheets; its music
on your cupped palms, drumming in the air.
Seven times around the boundary fence
you have walked with managers and men.

Each time, the yards had shrunk while
the balance-sheets read the same
and your epitaph was written in them
while, on the gates in aerosol, the jobless
signed their names in practice for the dole.

Every time the sun goes to bed, a liar,
it sets on your uneasy sleep and still it rises
in the morning with the dawn in which
your finger moves the switch to closedown -
the key, the padlock, the factory door.

© BH, 1989

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Another archived fragment resurrected on this later reading after 35 years. I swear the words settle over time.

This, if memory serves, was written in the 80s, responding to my time in Dundee, during the time when industrial and urban decline was an emerging feature.