Deserto Rosso: Ravenscraig /
Ravenscraig, a Worker’s Poem
Poems 4-8 4] IDEALISMS I sing the torrential folk, the makkar-maisters , The michty carousel of what we might have been Those men and women of love that loving deepened These men and women free Folk making things they need, just those Folk owning their own lives, only those Folk driving their problems nearer to the truth. I sing of the proud people it’s in our power to make our children I sing of our deeper selves. And you say … …. “Crap! That’s the kind of claptrap all idealists stuff our ears with! Stuff your ideals. Greed is our mark Profit our motive. Capitalists at heart, we long for possession, To possess our land, possess our partners. The past has clearly shown it Human Nature’s at the heart of it, you can’t change that!” Change that? I sing of our deeper selves. You’deny your self to yourself for this Ideal “Human Nature” A “Human Nature” beyond all change of circumstance Well “Human Nature”, what is that?
5] SOIL NATURE Just like a Mayan temple and for the same reasons Earth heaps in a dense pyramidical structure (though elongated) Coal heaps can be more steeply pitched. Coal piles more readily than soil. Soil has its structure for height – a flattened cone To raise the height the sides stretch out much wider And on the bulldozed top subsidiary pyramids are thrown. On an early morning once I saw one sharpen Its mass clogged the horizon. On its intensity Of dull black a spiky machine merged in its shape. As the sun rose up behind it the edge was cut from light And cold night’s brooding barrowwight held back the dawn Till the warm sun wore its strength away And the structure was suddenly detailed in the grey Soft light of morning. I saw small tufts of grass, but not at the top, Just clots of soil and cinders lay there Earthheaps, less epochal now, but vital No longer an Absolute thing, lurking at the boundaries of time But yet a microcosm, full of its own soil life. Avalanches trickle constantly on its surface. The heap is permeated with a slow damp, Swelled by every rain until it bursts, overripe, in grey plumes of dust. So the sides crumbling away adjusts the weight earthwards Settling its skirts, and it waits again.
Interminable streams of water oozing its heart Till water within washes away the base so one whole side shears of (As Aberfan). The rest falls slowly, filling the crevices. This is the way of soil, this is the way of its motions But the nature of soil, what’s that?
6] IRON NATURE Talking of Soil Nature, Iron has its “inner nature” too. Its stress is limited at birth. It is transformed from ore to iron, to steel with carbon, And then to bolts, to scrapheaps lying in the sun, to rust, to steel again. Some new capacity revealed in each further transformation. Take machining a nut. You can’t just hammer it to shape then shove it on any old how. Within the year internal stress would tear it apart. No, in the old days they’d crudely fashion it then let it rust awhile, That way it balanced its inner tensions, expanded a bit perhaps, Went its own way, settled down. Then they’d machine it finely Using even the splintering fragments as abrasive dust in the final grind. A perfect job. [No more, Cash Flow has left no jobs for Craftsmen]. These are the rules of iron’s life, of the strength of steel. The way it melts, high flexing stress in action. Each new demand makes its limits plainer But what is the inner nature – ore/iron/scrap/rust/steel? Unknown.
As Iron are we ourselves unknown in nature. Each test shows our limits plainer. Each man sets our rules and needs a little sharper. We know just how to get born and how to die. Each muscle has been catalogued, our minds become somewhat clearer But our essence, “Human Nature”, what is that? 7] MOTIVE FORCE We were talking of greed and human nature. “Be more precise”. OK. You say the motive’s profit and we’re all capitalists? But “profit” has definite meaning. It doesn’t imply “we all want something for our work”, that’s clear, But what work do shareholders do? What do they make? It’s not their work but their Capital yields them a profit What Capital have you? Some shareholders (or their parents) did do work that gave them wages And they saved what they earned and now those savings, invested, yield them profit. “Would that not be rightful profit?” But whence came that increase? Some workers made it. And the surplus becomes profit and is used and concentrates until Within one generation Their sons use other’s sons from birth and their sons are born unequal. So does the past control the present. So is it now. “Profit” is “Profit” on Capital What Capital have you? Consider that. What Capital have you? “We make it all, the ‘National Income’,
So if we can make more steel, don’t we, the makers, benefit?” We may Or we may not. It depends not on the size of the cake But he who holds the cakeknife. That’s why appeals for “discipline” fall dumb on Ford’s deaf workers, They know this: what they get depends on what they do Not to cars but to the class division that decreed Division widens ever between product and need. Don’t talk of “market forces” or of “Consumer Rule” Monopoly broke that, spirit and principle. Work, our creative play, is paid for on the nail or monthly (This is the sole measure of status, the slight degree we sell our bodies wholesale, There is the “middle” here is the “Working” class.) It’s the nature of capital that classes split. It’s in the nature of this world monopolies expand. But our nature, this “Human Nature”, what is that?
8] FIRST MYTH No humans live on the grey pits Here between Bellshill and Glasgow Between Bellshill and Glasgow lie Black Trolls. Their earthblack heads ponderously rising, Their pockmarked skulls cold, musty and lifeless. Their blankblack sockets stare in silence at ironworks – The black soil dribbles a little lava – Bright arclamps glare at them
The concrete rumbles in the tinpan clash of steelplate hot from the furnace. Some halfmen, steelmen, crouch in the glare Pacing with long rods, waiting. Their grey lungs pitted Cratered with dust. Now and again we feel the trolls beyond Those ancient pit heaps and we shiver with cold. The grey gloom slants a little, muffles the driving rain In a yellowing, sulphuric sky.