Arriving Manchester

Inexorably leaving rich red soil

and those green fields we babble of in towns,

the heaving train creeps under heavy cloud

that greyly swallows it and us again.

On yonder acre stands the bull foursquare

and plants himself against the city's threat,

nor, as it passes, heeds the cattletruck

that soon will drag him to the abattoir.

The city's symbols greet the grunting train-

not jade and chromium but rust and slag.

Still in the meadow roars the fated bull

and scorns the slaughterhouse whose butchers wait.