06. The Wash-Place

Enter by the red board door, step down
and duck beneath the head, into a low room
whitened with its annual coat of lime
crusted thick; that crumbles at a touch
to show the red brick cake, in which
the air is dense with steam

and scents of soap and smoke and the hot breath
from a fire that flames in the boiler’s cast-iron grate.
The floor’s uneven, grey flags clean
from the weekly flow of soapy streams
that run from the mangle, whose rollers creak
and squeeze the towels and sheets.

Step back—
this private place, an out-house
single-storey, grey-slate roofed
between the “Back Place” and “The Piggery”
is washed away. The mangle was the first to go
to her relief; taken by the ‘Rag-n-Bone’.

The dolly tub became a bran-tub, then collected rain.
The dolly, which had soaked up so much strain
thrown out, to find a place
amongst other relics of a labouring age.

The woman who routinely laboured there
sits upright in her orthopaedic chair.