GREENOCK circa 1875

When the silky white gauze
Of eddying fogs
And the teeming downpours
Of colourless rain
Were coincidentally absent,
And there were silent shafts
Of feeble sunlight filtering
Through the capacious clouds,
Then the bluish green of the pitching hills

Above the yawning glens,
And the grey swells of the firth
That slapped the bows of merchant vessels,
Were pleasant enough to enchant
First-time travellers
Among the thousands of seamen
Who crewed the hundreds of ships
That sought the dozens of wharves
Fronting the town.
Had they journeyed
During epochs preceding
The nineteenth century,
They might have been further charmed
By the sight of fishing villages
And the frayed sails and weathered boats
Of earnest seekers of maritime staples.
Now, tucked into mellow folds
In a patch of earth that was abutted
By the uplands to the south
And the waters to the north,
There were refineries that spewed
The sickly bouquet of burning sugar,
Textile factories from which listless columns
Of steam rose skyward,
And squalid tenements where life was hard,
Hearts were habitually broken
By the hammers of poverty,
And people frequently prayed
To an old deity
For the consolations of another life.
On the shoreline,
Beside the chaotic array of docks
And the impressive façade of the customs house,
There were shipyards,
In which the technological marvels
Of their day were constructed.
West of the town centre were neighbourhoods
Where the money of commerce
Had found opulent homes,
Cohabiting snugly
With the oblivious recipients
Of fortuitous inheritances
And the shrewd entrepreneurs
Of revolutions inspired
By the new gods
Of mechanised industry.

The photograph shows Greenock's Custom House Quay in 1878.