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The Politics of Heritage

Stuart Butler

Wednesday, September 24th, 2003

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 I love those late September afternoons,
When a Sunday sun sinks westward,
With those golden geometric bars
Slanting out from a darkening cloudscape;
And I love it when a storm of conkers comes crashing down
As the autumnal evening wind picks up,
And the chimney-stacks turn to silhouettes;
And I love it when middle-aged men with middle aged spare tyres
Sit squashed into their Goodyear Wolverhampton shirts,
Fishing by the canal, happy with their maggots,
And oblivious to the gathering shadows and dog mess;
And I love it when you take your mum back to the church
Where she was christened 88 years ago –
Where her grand parents are buried and where her parents were married,
And where she admired the grave of an 18 year old girl,
Who strangely died the day her father was christened,
And I love it when we drive back past the County Ground,
Where a pub tries to reinvent the imperial past,
By placing a stuffed drayhorse and a cart
Outside the 19th century pretend jug and bottle;
The horse faces a labour of Hercules,
Forever bending right down to the pavement,
Forever trying to nibble non-existent grass
That will never grow from a busy street’s pockmarked pavement.
So isn’t it nice when the heritage culture industry
Unwittingly invalidates itself with the unwitting symbolism
Of unwitting political art?

© Stuart Butler

Notes

Coincidentallyand sadly, the day I penned this was the day that redundancies were announced at the Goodyear factory in Wolverhampton.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/the-politics-of-heritage/