Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

From the back yard of his back-to-back,
my great-great-granddad searched for spaces
in the smoke-filled sky to stack his dreams,
high enough above the cholera to keep them
and his newborn safe from harm.

In eighteen sixty-nine, eyes dry with dust
from twelve hours combing flax beneath
the conicals of light in Marshall’s Temple Mill,
he took the long way home because
he craved the comfort of a wider view.

As he passed the panelled gates of Tower Works,
the tall octagonal crown of Harding’s chimney
drew his sights beyond the limits of his working life
drowned the din of engines, looms and shuttles
with imagined peals of ringing bells.

Today, my footsteps echo in the sodium gloom
of Neville Street’s Dark Arches and the red brick vaults
begin to moan as time, collapsing in the River Aire,
sweeps me out to meet him on the Wharf.

We stand now, timeless in the flux of time, anchored
only by the axis of our gaze – a ventilation shaft
with gilded tiles, and Giotto’s geometric lines –
while the curve of past and future generations
arcs between us.