Keeping the Bears in Line

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Teddy Bear Factory, Coalbrookdale, Ironbridge, Shropshire. The Teddy Bear Factory has closed, but while it was open, discipline among the bears must have been pretty strict, as the spikes on these railings show: photo by Mike White, 27 October 2008

The Orange bears with soft friendly eyes
Who played with me when I was ten,
Christ, before I'd left home they'd had
Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs
Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting
Bellies kicked in, their tongues ripped
Out, and I went down through the woods
To the smelly crick with Whitman
In the Haldeman-Julius edition,
And I just sat there worrying my thumbnail
Into the cover -- What did he know about
Orange bears with their coats all stunk up with soft coal
And the National Guard coming over
From Wheeling to stand in front of the millgates
With drawn bayonets jeering at the strikers?

I remember you would put daisies
On the windowsill at night and in
The morning they'd be so covered with soot
You couldn't tell what they were anymore.

A hell of a fat chance my orange bears had!



Kenneth Patchen: The Orange Bears, from Red Wine and Yellow Hair, 1949

Teddy Fence, Coalbrookdale, Ironbridge, Shropshire. These delightful heads are on the back fence of the former Merrythought Teddy Bear factory, now sadly closed. The factory units are being re-let for small industrial and retail businesses: photo by Gordon Cragg, 13 February 2009