100% Cotton

I'll defend my own land, Frank shouts across
the privet at the man, in shalwar
and t-shirt, who’s moved in next door.

It's only a hedge. Isn’t ‘land’ a bit grand
for your handkie-sized plot? Blood on the boil,
I fought for this country, Frank cries as he falls.

His gashed head lies wrapped in soft lint,
morphine eases the rage from his brow.
Not knowing how to care for a bully,

she brings new pyjamas, finest white cotton,
blue piping, remembering that day when
her mum bought him two-for-the-price-of-one,

polyester, ‘seconds’ from the market, a fiver,
and his temper sent static crackling
between them that went on for a week.

Did he think he was bettering himself
drawing in the cord, tied tight,
an Englishman, one-hundred-percent cotton?

A buddleia grows where smoke
once belched as thousands swarmed
to the sound of the hooter, three shifts a day,

and alongside the crumbling chimney
a minaret rises and men, loose-trousered,
fill the close-packed streets

drawn by the call of the muezzin, hugging
woollen coats against an Oldham winter
while she, at his bedside, waits to offer nightwear

adopted, adapted from an ancient design
of tailors in the markets of  Kharachi,
not sure if he knows payejama is an Urdu word.