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Tonight, the Black Country is tinseled by sleet
Falling on little towns lit up in the darkness like constellations
The Pigeon, the Collier, and upon the shooting stars are boy racers
Who comet through the streets in white novas
It's blowing in drifts from the pit bank
Over the brown ribbon of the cut, over Beacon Hill
Through the lap-loved chimneys of the factories
Sleet is tumbling into the lap of the plaster-cast Mary
By the manger at St. Jude's
Her face gorgeous and naive as the last Bilston Carnival Queen
In the low-rise flats, opposite the cemetery
Mrs. Shole is turning on her fibre-optic tree
And unfolding her ticket for the rollover lottery
"Though we ain't never had a bit of luck in our lives"
And upstairs, in the box rooms of a thousand semis
Hearts are stuttering and minds unraveling like unfinished knitting
And the sleet fattens and softens to snow
Blanking the crowded rows of terraces
And their tiny hankies of garden, white now
Surrendering their bird feeders and sand pits
The shed Mick built last autumn when the factory clammed up
And the work's gone again
And the old boys are up at dawn to clock on nowhere
Sit walk their dogs, and sigh at the cars
Streaming to call centres and supermarkets
Because there ain't nothing in it that's
Man's work, really barbed their eye
But it's coming down now, really coming
Over the stands at the Molineux
Over Billy Wright kicking his dreams into the ring road
And in the dark, behind the mechanics
The old fiend, his boy, props his BMX against the lock-ups
And unzips to piss a flower into the snow
"Well, give me strength, Lord, to turn the other cheek
For we're the only ones halfway decent round here"
And the tower blocks are advent calendars
Every curtain pulled to reveal a snow-blurred face
And it's Christmas soon, abide it or not
For now the pubs are illuminated pink and gold
The Crooked House, more Pardoes, The Struggling Man
And snow is filling women's hair like blossom
And someone's drunk already and throwing a punch
And someone's jamming a key in a changed lock, shouting
"For Christ's sake, Maury, you'll freeze me to death"
And a hundred new bikes are being wrapped in sheets
And small pajamas warmed on fire guards
And children are sighing, "One more minute, just one, Mum"
And the old girls are watching someone die on a soap
And feeling every snow they've ever seen set in their bones
It's snowing on us all
And I think of you, Eloise
Down there in your terrace, feeding your baby
Or touching his hand to the snow
And although we can't ever go back or be what we were
I can tell you, honestly
I'd give up everything I worked for or thought I wanted in this life
To be with you tonight