In The Lord Line Building

The Lord Line, one of the deep sea trawlers owners that operated from Hull to not on the death of the fishing industry in the town.  The old dock area the buildings around are mainly demolished;  the Lord Line building still stands, but vandalised and ravaged it is now just a shell waiting the arrival of the bulldozers.  Last week I took a, maybe, last look around it.

In The Lord Line Building

 

There's a feeling of sadness

Mixed with a wistful awe

As we pick our careful way

Across a rubble strewn floor.

An eerie sort of half light,

As though hiding from the day,

Hiding our history until

It's finally thrown away.

 

This building still stands

Though gutted inside:

I suppose now it represents

A city's lost pride.

Graffitied walls

Fittings smashed

Not much left

Of its proud past.

 

I can see the lock gates.

Now sealed against the tide,

Imagine an old sidewinder

Waiting patiently inside:

Waiting to land wet fish

That valuable tasty haul

Brought safely on board

From its bulging trawl.

 

Imagine steel segged clogs

clacking clicking up the road,

Bobbers walking the tunnel

To handball this load.

Seen from a window the old dock

Just a sea of reeds, silted and gone

Hiding a chequered past 

As time has moved on.

 

I sit to reflect for a while 

On a broken office chair:

I can feel the past 

Flowing through  me there.

Such a sense of sadness

Now filling my head

Time to get up and leave,

This building is now dead.

 

One last walk around outside

See huge cracks in the wall.

How long before the dozers

Finally make the bricks fall.

On the White Fish Authority roof

Children have set a fire

Maybe a symbolic recognition

Of its coming funeral pyre.

 

The flames gutter and die

As the children run away 

And the once proud building

Survives yet another sad day.

A sparrow hawk stoops

As we walk away

A sort of hopeful end

To a sad and weary day.