The Chisel in the Cable

A cable trench in the yard of a riverside power station in Deptford on a grey morning in fine drizzle, in a long wooden trough a thick black cable of concentric copper tubes wrapped in paper and pitch, standing upright on it a square chisel of dark forged iron forty-three centimetres long, its head spread flat and mushroomed from hammering, its slender point resting on the cable, a man's bare hand in a rolled flannel sleeve holding the chisel shaft, at the top edge the iron head of a raised sledgehammer cut off by the frame, the tall brick engine hall soft in the river mist behind.