Manchester Memories Poem by C Richard Miles

They used to call you Cottonopolis,
My Manchester, in that far-distant time
Where smog from smokestacks, gathered grease and grime
In consort, stalked your tawdry terraced streets.
Those were the days that you were in your prime,
Queen of the North, cold crowned with drizzling clouds,
Whose soot and showers fell co-mingled down
To blacken flags and cobbles, intertwined
With lofty spires of chimneys which the globe
Thought signified the god of industry.
In clattering clogs and tattered rags you bore,
Hid underneath your royal purple robe
The awful truth of dark reality,
Beneath the heather of the Pennine Moor.