What is the relationship
Between London and the river
London is people
People at work
They climb the stairs
They use the lifts
They enter temples
They enter palaces
They go to parks
They go to carnivals
The river passes by
Looking for the sky
The hills of London
The views of London
Look out across the plain
At the glittering burning
Magically misted
Serpentine, eel twisted
Walled and fenced
Dragon rolling river
Higher up on the hillsides
Are the poor streets
Crammed and sandwiched
Shops and stores and baskets and signs
Rickety wooden doors
Worn walled sign covered and rain rusted
With the usual
Roar and rumble of the traffic
Clattering and clanking
A slow one-step forward
Of bus and taxi and van
Of cyclist and pigeon and man
The river hurries up
The river whirls around
And all of its arms are severed
And all of its feet are dragged thru the mire
And all of its eyes are sunken down
Sunken deep, sunken and drowned
There Is very little of a merry sound
It passes thru it cuts deep down
Its water table spreads like blood
Beneath the neighbourhood
And gurgles into forgotten wells
And surges thru drains
Spitting from the cracks in road tunnels
Kissing the surfaces of concrete foundations
People climb up and slide down
Hitting their briefcases on iron railings
Hanging their plastic bags in trees
Losing their surgical masks in the breeze
There’s nothing in their pockets but money
There’s nothing in their pockets but tickets
The river could wash away their bodies
And everywhere their names forgotten
In old church yards; in old burial pits
When the population could easily fit inside the city walls
Names carved in stone
Of dead people now alone
That the Victorian growth
Smothered and smote
And left behind the nameless
Of the 20th century
The one in a million man
Who doesn’t have a footnote
In the city files and records
Digitalised and growing
The river has nothing to remember
Of the city jaws shutting
It leaves its summer upriver
And it hurries down to its mother
No I can’t see any sign of river
I can’t see any joy of a river
Except for a more musical sound
As passes by south end
As it joins up
With natures land
