in hours this housing trust home        reduced to a pile

of red bricks bulldozed    clinking/ booming          into

skips            carted off as fill         to new subdivisions

 

 

now a block vacant but for the odd limemortarscabbed

terra cotta                                a writhing lead pipe elephant

trunk frozen in concrete and strangely          a mattress

 

 

these homes held the children i taught  thirty years ago

 

their fathers

from the assembly line at chryslers coming Home of a

Friday after a few beers from the marion or the tonsley

 

 

their mothers

from the upholstery cutting room                 stuffed

returning to linoed kitchens

 

 

 

these blocks                                                scraped of history

all ripe for gentrification                           as poverty

moves further north or south to fresh suburban fringes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First published Quadrant  Jan- Feb, 2006

Also The Quadrant Book of Poetry and micromacro