This Skeptic Aisle

This dredged channel, this barren avenue

This ravaged course, this blasted thoroughfare

This bleak and concrete way

 

Our shade against the heat of summer

Our cover from the sudden storm

Arboreal elegance swapped

For rough-patched holes in the ground

 

This bleak dyspeptic signage

This road to a clean artistic mill

All polished stone, flooding light and Hockneyed brilliance

 

No blossom, no helicopters, no nuts or conkers

No more safe haven for butterfly or birdlife

What talk now of the enrichment of Bradford's jewel.

 

This vandalized village, this home, this heritage, this Saltaire.