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Immaculate Conception, 1930s Style
In the grim and grimy gennels,
In the dust and shadows of the grit-stone get,
Where the eternal roaring cotton mills,
Wove the cloth on which the sun should never set.
Joan Ottley gave birth to a boy, in shame,
In the back room of her father's shop.
She claimed not to know the fathers name,
The mills wove on, but the tongues didn't stop.
Pelted with abuse and hounded,
In a town that knew no empty threat.
Through the cobbled streets of the narrow minded,
The single mum ran a lifelong gauntlet.
"Ottley's bastard" grew cold and hard,
Burdened by the inherent shame.
He turned his back on the vicious village,
That never troubled to learn his name.
Whilst the Churchmen, pillars of society all,
With stabbing finger, from the lofty pulpit.
Spewed forth acrid vitriol,
On the woman and the nameless culprit.
The church was full of men like these,
Sanctimonious bastards all.
The Anglican Church's Pharisees,
They supervised the fall.
On her death bed, Joan, in great old age,
Drove off the vicar, in her rage, when he asked about her will.
Had she remembered to remember the church?
The church that had left her in the lurch.
She said later, in dying, she had one fear,
"I'll never see my boy's grave in Korea."
