Deconstruction of Nicholsons On the closing of Millom ironwo

            On the closing of Millom ironworks: September 1968,.
             Written by Norman Nicholson; a poem about the closing of a factory in Nicholson's home town, Millom, a small mining town in Cumbria. The factory had provided jobs for the people of Millom for around one hundred years, and was clearly a core part of Milloms social history. Nicholson displays his own sadness as well as the other inhabitants of Millom at its closing throughout the poem. .
             Nicholson creates an impression of aloofness in the opening lines of the poem;.
             Wondering which way the day will drift. The use of alliteration of w' is effective, it sounds as it should feel; lightly blowing you down the page, detached. There is a distinct feeling of indifference, in the open stanza. It is written in free verse and the slow but varying lengths and pace causes you to amble down the page almost stumbling into the next point. .
             The next thing I notice is a play on a cliché in the following line; .
             On the spur of a habit. The cliché being; spur of the moment. He is looking to the feathered weather-cock' as a result of a habit but the sight has changed, where he once saw smoke flowing from the furnace chimneys he now sees;.
             no grey smoke tail. This line is made to stand out from the rest of the stanza. It is put forward as more of a statement separate from the previous lines, reflecting on its importance and helping to make clear the emotion and feeling behind the poem. .
             Nicholson describes the, .
             hum and the blare that for one hundred years drummed at the towns death ears. The idea of the drumming and hum gives an impression that the factory's noise was of a comfort to the people of Millom, as it would be a sound that they would have grown up with and not known any different. The fact that this new found silence is described as roaring is maybe not so ridiculous (even though it is an oxymoron) as it is something so out of the ordinary for them and so can imaginably be more piercing and unsettling than the constant blare of the factory.