salford perspectives: salford swagger

Salford Swagger

gknapton

Ice west wind on my arms like needles

Freezing me in minutes at best

Scatter-gun rain as cold as sea gulls

Blowing in from Merseyside West

Hard-ass dockers and none-too-feebles

Swelling up the port side banks

Tug craft rocking like a voyage of Beagles

Coasting round the deep-lock tanks

Swing-bridge shifting like a shoal of sea shells

Mashing up the basin drift

Deck-hands, skivvies and beggars giving evils

Feeding on the dockside thrift

Cranemen, gunners and Irish gangway runners

And sea men in the sailor's mess

All the brewers brewing 

Buying bootleg mother's ruin

From a stowaway who couldn't care less

At a man-made port sitting forty miles inland 

Over on the Irwell sand

Barons got rotten on Mississippi cotton

Old Manchester was made by hand*

* By the mid 19th Century the port of Chester declined as the River Dee silted up.

In 1894 a new port was fashioned nearby. They built a ship canal. A man-made Chester, so to speak. The port of Manchester.

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03/12/09