MANCHESTER by Antony Rowland

M2   The Knott Sluice

Winter’s spinning ice-markets trace

wonder beaches, Furdustrandir,

peeling from the lost river Dene

and Hanging Ditch, Irk to Irwell,

where the Hilton pummels a mansion

and water slops consumer dark.

Your label unease freezes,

cutting a tash down to the locks

with youth, with all your left to give

among arches, arcade bibbers,

varðlokkur chants in Piccadilly

under adverts’ encomia,

ward enticers to the Etihad

past seborrhoeic road-dumps

and seasons without leaves:

sky blues dawn against Trafford reds.   

 M3   Tippler Weir

Trenches: your hold on these canals

where fry in dock wriggle to sump

far from the Rochdale skraelingjar,

the blush of Collyhurst sandstone.

A heron cramps. The pavements rink

in this vicus: a smithing hearth;

a poetry kiln. Metalwork

where horses tire the grassland.

A jackdaw crabs the guttering

where water thins the leaves down to

skin pits of dead walk höfðingjar.

You skirtled round the defenders

and planted it in the box. A tug

aspergillum sprinkles water.

Mills crunch Roman remains with clues

of cohort, word square, Mithras, culvert. 

M4   The Northern Quarter, Acushla

Off traffic lights cluster their licorice

and a digger shackles its mesh

as the night tiles to your first pint

where scutchers honed cotton fibre

and a graduate plods a slab

torn as his suede. This since photo

has been bulldozed over nights:

The New Cross Labour Club, Ancoats.

Blinds hide the tired light that dusts

VOTE LATHAM: these pensioners doze 

in best under the pole, proud

as flats that tower the canvas.

Now Homebase turns debates to scroll,

stamps flint glass, moss litter and

their politics hot as blossom.

May they have polled. May they piece rest.  

M31 Cring

Glazebrook to Stockport Tiviot:

a switching station burns the spur

where Shell refines its polythene

and air distils into fractals.

A mosque opens its journalist:

the roads are closer to us now,

tied by an event and tape

that breezes. Our bunches drift

around the statue. Anne buses

end in fresh streets as the sunshine

feints its relevance and sirens

inject their caffeine: yellow bibs

promote corners and match the smiles’

acid on bedroom walls. Trams

adjust their pitch along stations

where cube artists buckle their scrap.

 M42 Strangeways

The evening falls to a burst string:

a hung audience smokes its cool

as rain exits to bouncers’ hands

and a Fender feeds the shutter,

an open chord into the white 

where Strangeways towers its closure.

The Arms empties to a wolf moon:

red lights carry the silence, and 

our fear settles the fog, exposed 

as your voice, softer now,

on a footbridge threatening a map.

Cans beach the Irwell, and canned 

factories press to yellow cones

that spell our night where planes outwit 

the stars. Count four to orchestrate 

chaos: scrapped bars jenga the lot.