Before the Clocks Struck Three (Mr. Eliot Had an Apparition in Salford and It Was Very Foggy) Salford is the rainiest place, getting Inside my shoes, wetting Tired feet in undarned socks. Yesterday, before the clocks Struck three, three old horses Munched wet grass Among the relics Of Clifton’s Wet Earth Colliery: Which on reflection, Were beautiful objects Of rust, time and toil. Fog swirls, curls Around the clock tower, The quays, the trees —

Time and Rust Fog swirls, curls around vans, cars, slips ghostlike through bare branches. A neighbour snorts into a handkerchief made (he says) from Greengate cotton. “Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of the Wet Earth Colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.”