When completed in 1867, the Grand Hotel, Scarborough, was one of the largest hotels in the world. The hotel's distinctive yellow brickwork was made locally in Hunmanby. The building is designed around the theme of time: four towers to represent the seasons, 12 floors for the months of the year, 52 chimneys for the weeks, and, originally, there were 365 bedrooms.
We yellow
in the fretting mist,
in a cold and massive sea
of worn out efforts.
To survive another dying day,
we group together
in a futile way
to seek out the haunting touch of warmth.
We have finished
with love,
we have come to die
among the lifts and dumb waiters
of a Grand Hotel no longer grand,
gone back to seed.
We choke on our fish and chips,
our battered skin
crumbling like these faded walls.
We are a calendar
of bent and aching hours,
sick with the germs of an English decay.
We hang about,
waiting for the coach
to take us away
and burn us
and our dreams.
Once we sang
in the midst of springtime hope,
our holiday hymns full of a rash desire.
Now we come here
to die in this recession,
on this grim evening,
thinking of the empire lost
and why we fought for it,
things gone wrong
with our poor children
who have inherited
our tears.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
