shipyards

17d

On days when air was clarified by frost
and a translucent moon came close to earth
I’d hear the rhythms of pneumatic riveting hammers
in a high-tiered lecture room…

—James Aitchison, “Riveting”
Published in The Flight of the Turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (ASL, 2011)

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Glasgow #GlasgowUniversity #Clydeside #shipyards

James Aitchison
RIVETING

On days when air was clarified by frost
and a translucent moon came close to earth
I’d hear the rhythms of pneumatic riveting hammers
in a high-tiered lecture room.

Some of the shipyard men had served their time
when white-hot iron bolts were still slammed home
by sledgehammers with half-width heads,
precision instruments in riveters’ hands.

Riveters worked a forty-eight-hour week
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, eighty feet
above the Clyde. They felt the scaffolding
sway like a ship at sea when strong winds blew.

Shipyard credentials? None. My student jobs –
summer gophering on Grangemouth building sites,
delivering Christmas mail –
were so short-term they were paid holidays.

Back in the lecture room, Alexander Scott
taught in a voice that rattled window panes,
electrified the air and woke the dead.
William Dunbar is chanting in my head.

ALT

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