To Be Born Here Is To Know You Are Blessed Poem by Mark Heathcote

Manchester is embedded in my heart.
Its poetry, music, and public art
Artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Hangs alongside L. S. Lowry's sketchy
Waterways, buildings that smell like latrines
Dark brooding, inner-city landscape scenes
Industrial factory workers, dogs
And young teens, men and boys in boots and clogs,

Smog-painted cotton mills, oily canals
Red-brick chimneys turned over like sepals
Are they now luxury condominiums?
But the canals are still hideous.
They are filled with shopping trollies and beer cans.
And infected needles, a dozen rats
Plus, keep watch for the bulldozer's approach.
While the city expands on its encroachment,

Towering cranes cover the skyline.
Monolithic monuments like Saline
Tubes feed the greed of an ambitious few.
Little has changed; we're still back in the queue.
Us match-stalk men are proud of our heritage.
Our northern soul, Boddington's beverage
Our poet, Dame Carol Ann Duffy
It's all part of our topology.

It's the way we danced at Twisted Wheel.
A spinning backflip into a cartwheel
The rave music of the hacienda,
The acid-house gyrating dilemma
Wanting never to sleep or surrender
Back into that sad 9-to-5 ever-after
Back to that poorly-paid Lowry sweatshop,
It's in my heart, my blood, and every teardrop.

Manchester's iconic Joy Division
Love will tear us apart. That cynicism
Is what binds us all, kid, that and The Smiths?
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now—riffs
Legends like Bobby Charlton and George Best
And those like Denis Law, who wore both vests
Manchester is buried deep in my chest.
To be born here is to know you are blessed.