MY CHANGING TOWN

Where are the little girls, dancing and skipping,

 And those enamel bowls of pork fat dripping

   In the new part of town?

  Where run the dogs with saliva-moist bones

 Over rain-washed, dark grey cobble stones 

In the new part of town?

Where are the sparrows, chilled to their marrows

 Through the streets broad and narrow 

Of the new part of town?

 Where are shop windows with little square panes?

 Where are the curved and leafy lanes 

 In the new part of town?

Where are the rowdy, crowdy, and bawdy 

Old drunks, spilling out of tap rooms tawdry 

In the new part of town?

Where is the moustached old man with his cry of 'Papers' 

The finger-soiled bundles of candles and tapers 

In the new part of town?

Where wafts the smell of frizzling fish frying, 

The tossing and blowing of soap-washed shirts drying

 In the new part of town?

What happened to Nell with her long skirts and laces? 

It isn't the same. You don't see the same faces 

In the new part of town.

One day came the monster machine and it spewed at our feet 

The masses of concrete and glass by the sheet. 

It made the new part of town.

And with plenty of time and infinite trouble 

It squawked and it screeched and it built on the rubble 

The new part of town.

And under the site of the new 'Super-Mart' 

Like the days long gone by, is buried, my heart 

In the new part of town.

Margaret Watford