Emma-Jane Arkady
Light Engineering
Lancashire Repetition Ltd. 1979
The clean and gold of brass and green
enamelled single-spindle-rod autos, polished
humming a clean spring hum, ting
after ting spelling the rhyme
of a thousand thousand spring-catch shafts
for the Norton Gas & Fluid Flow Co. -
music to apprenticed production control.
Latticed eaves were hung in a bright glass,
casting patterns on the guard lines -
neat painted to British Standard
in white and cross-hatch on the floor,
placed at corners for stillage -
turning-rod and billets for the fly-press.
A fingered clock, paced the day
carding the lads to nights
of Crown Green and Golden;
and it was always warm,
top lights propped to the slim
sight of a Boeing’d sky.
But it was seventy-nine,
Schubert Eight and The Art of Fugue,
a Lacrimosa without Sussmayer
and as their last and latest
I got the final task, special project 278/79,
closure co-ordination.
After the auction it acquired the aura
of Bath, Ely, Wells; a clerestory
high over a wounded floor,
gash-cuts dragged to the bay,
bolt marks at the wrenching of sleek precision;
and it was empty, empty space and still.
Small details resonated the most:
the countersunk chrome slot-heads, scattered
where the project board had been knocked
down for a tenner; naked three-phase; flexing
in the high lights, stripped of fluorescence;
and the last fragments of brass,
thin-cut spirals engaging my sole.
Page(s) 42-43
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