In Coventry
Cathy Galvin

Sandbagged Taff with a crown of nails
dances the weir of steps
with golden rails.
She stares.

Mary gone with another man –
Mam locked her door.
Card marked by Peeping Tom:
just couldn’t take any more.

Taff descends on a sideways slant.
Mint-green cream precinct lights
his floor. Coventry glass-stained –
God and the Locarno.

She sees his moves. Slave-soul trails
smooth a footfall of workers
from Lucifer's chains –
past fountains.

Crucified in cathedral and car line.
Godiva sees them all. Don’t look:
Taff’s feet. Flesh falling on stone.
Fed to banks, guns, her Lord.

The dance goes on.

Poet’s note on the poem: We always return to the landscapes of childhood. Coventry is mine. It's reflected in Black and Blue, sonnets about my father and mother who came from Yorkshire and Ireland to work in the factories of the booming post-war 1960's city. This poem began after reading one of the same name by Charles Causley in his collection, Underneath the Water. Strolling through the newly-built modernist shops of the Coventry precinct, he watched a drunk Welshman crashing, "sand-bagged", to the ground. It's a superb poem. This is my imagining of what brought "Taff" to the city and a lament for all those who once worked there.

Journalist and poet Cathy Galvin is Director of the Word Factory, the UK's leading promoter of short fiction and named in memory of the workers of Coventry. She is associate editor of Newsweek.

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