LYE WASTE HOUSES... (My new poem about an old photograph of Lye, West Midlands...)

 Lye Waste Houses…

A dull, heavy thatch, like the women’s wrapped shawls hangs low,

Clinging tightly to a mud wall featuring a small, shuttered window

On a narrow street which drops away, like Lye Waste soon declined,

The scene seemingly misted by sepia industrial smog, yellowy and unrefined.

High chimneys appear to reach for some cleaner air and stretch 

Clear of the thatch, whilst an upstairs window gapes wide as if to retch

At the pervading stink from the manufacture of firebricks,  iron chains, nails

And factory machinery, where poorly paid workers grafted for their travails…

Pete Ray

28th March 2025…    

The image really caught my eye.

I know Lye quite well from watching soccer games there, at Stourbridge Road

 (‘Nobody likes us, we are The Lye’…) 

and it appears that travellers once settled in that area, apparently able to build a mud and clay house, complete with a fireplace in twenty-four hours…

The monochrome copy of the old sepia image seems less intimidating, for the yellowy effect makes me think of wafting industrial waste and vapours… 

The local subjects probably wore their ‘Sunday best’ and were directed to remain very still while the photographer prepared the scene…