The Digbeth Tripe House

I dreamt of The Digbeth Tripe House
The building seemed to sigh and creek
Beneath the warping Tudor beams
And weary men who stand in line
The frankest of nourishments they seek
Woven with blades of Lickey Hills
And sculpted like Chantilly gills
In shades of grey and hues of white
To sate the blindest appetite
For the River Rea holds no eels
Or glistening trout for tasty meals
Its eiderdown of acrid foams
Hides noxious grease and resting bones

Digbeth, the spring from which the city grew
From Saxon days they trace it to
When tanners bent to pick and scrape
At flesh and hair from rotting hides
Years later people came in tides
To the city of a thousand trades
Where thousands slogged to quickly fade
They sweated only for their meal
Of boiled tripe or jellied heel
Like unseen cogs inside a wheel
To churn out objects cast in iron
To last before they turned to rust
Leave long their makers in the dust

I dreamt of The Digbeth Tripe House
A lady in an apron serves
The tripe and neatsfoot in a pot
A dish most comforting when hot
A young man waits and lingers there
To watch, perhaps to catch her eye
He smiles at her but she is shy
He'll seek her at The Onion Fair
Meanwhile he'll toil with hand-held tools
At making barrels for military guns
Where metal filings coat the air
A shadow taints his scuppered lungs

On the streets by The Digbeth Tripe House
The children play in unpaved yards
Which overflow with sludge and filth
In dead men's shoes they sink and slide
They're lucky to have lived to five
On blessed days they'll dine on tripe
Their mother boils it up in milk
A treat so mild and smooth as silk
The best they'll ever get for eats
So full of minerals and fat
And everything which hunger seeks
They'll be lucky to survive
The germs and horrors of their dive
Where families are forced to eat
The candle wax just to survive

The Digbeth Tripe House stands no more
They tore it down between the wars
Now seventy to eighty pounds
Of bovine intestine is fed to hounds
Though Midlanders who live today
Have tripehound in their DNA
It isn't dog food, that's just hype
The industrial revolution was built on tripe