from Blackwater Quartet, selection 46

Walking on the Thames

Meccano miles to London: carriages

commute in slinky combinations past

the terraced suburbs. We meet at Claridge’s,

comparing life to life within our caste

then catch the last trains home. Across precast

and corrugated scenes a sense of time

connects the sparking track to the sublime.

December skies are quarrelsome. The rack

of weather gullies back to Seven Dials,

Museum Street, and you behind a stack

of first editions. The dust of viols’

muted measures dignifies denials,

a century grown sullen with its ghosts.

The CD catalogues these last outposts.

The peacock soirée ends with Auden’s Spain;

the taxis pass in pairs or not at all

this time of night. We stand in stair-rod rain

and stamp the street’s cascades against the sprawl

of doorways. Saviours loom from lanes, and bawl

their cider sermons in the acid light

where random neon punctuates the night.